Important - yes. Hugely influential, created an entire sound, often emulated, never bettered, there are some incredible beats here - Let Me Ride, Nuthin' but a G Thang, Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat - and plenty of mood and novel innovations. It's hard to overstate The Chronic's significance in the history of hip hop and the rise of the West Coast. But - looking back - there are no classic verses on this album. Despite his charisma, Snoop was never a great rapper and Dr Dre isn't a rapper at all (the DOC would surely have featured more but for his tragic vocal accident). The skits are infantile, puerile and, most unforgivably, unamusing. The subject matter barely moves beyond smoking, macking, hoes, fronting and general gangsta BS - when you compare this record with the searing social commentary of Cube's Predator released the same year, this album just has nothing to say. Dre would later perfect the formula with the massive 2001, arguably near single handedly flipping hip hop from niche to the main stream (where EVERY beat in the charts was a hip hop beat). This album leads there for sure and it's a classic in its context but aside from a handful of tracks, age well it has not.