No. 2 Dr. Dre
Hip-hop’s most iconic producer is the West Coast’s most successful, influential and long-standing hitmaker. Beyond California, however, the “D-R-E” is the hip-hop producer most widely credited with moving the genre’s sound away from dense, sample-heavy collages and breakbeats, adding a distinctly fluid and melodic approach that led to the genre’s growing mainstream appeal in the mid-’90s. Dre’s unmistakable backdrops supported hip-hop notables like N.W.A., Snoop Dogg, 2Pac, Busta Rhymes and Eve; R&B artists like Michel’e and Bilal, and even the titans of industrial music, Nine Inch Nails.
