[5] The Chronic was Dr. Dre's first solo album after he departed the West Coast hip hop group N.W.A and its label Ruthless Records over a financial dispute.

It features many appearances by then-emerging American rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, who used the album as a launch pad for boosting his solo career.

The Chronic reached number three on the Billboard 200 and has been certified triple platinum with sales of three million copies in the United States,[6][7] making Dre one of the top ten best-selling American performing artists of 1993.

[16] In Rolling Stone's The Immortals – The Greatest Artists of All Time, where Dr. Dre was listed at number 56, Kanye West wrote on the album's production quality: "The Chronic is still the hip-hop equivalent to Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life.

"[18] Pareles observed that the songs "were smoother and simpler than East Coast rap, and [Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg] decisively expanded the hip-hop audience into the suburbs.

"[19] Until this point, mainstream hip hop had been primarily party music (for example, Beastie Boys)[20] or pro-empowerment and politically charged (for example, Public Enemy or X-Clan), and had consisted almost entirely of samples and breakbeats.

It was noted that the album was a "frightening amalgam of inner-city street gangs that includes misogynist sexual politics and violent revenge scenarios".

Growing up poor, often surrounded by violence, and having served six months in the Wayside County jail outside of Los Angeles (for cocaine possession) gave Snoop Dogg experiences upon which he draws.

This oddball crew convened at Dre’s Calabasas mansion and the Solar studios with musicians Colin Wolfe and Chris “The Glove” Taylor, smoking, bonding, writing, and recording, punching in and exchanging ideas.

[31] The song was nominated for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group at the 1994 Grammy Awards,[32] but lost to Digable Planets' "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)".

Steve Huey of AllMusic named it "the archetypal G-funk single" and added "The sound, style, and performances of "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" were like nothing else on the early-'90s hip-hop scene.

In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, Havelock Nelson wrote that the album "drops raw realism and pays tribute to hip-hop virtuosity.

[38] Matty C of The Source claimed that Snoop Dogg's "Slick Rick-esque style" produces "new ground for West Coast MCs" and that the album is "an innovative and progressive hip-hop package that must not be missed.

[42] Jonathan Gold of the Los Angeles Times wrote that, although the rappers lack "quick wit" and "rhythmic virtuosity", Dre's artistry is "on a par with Phil Spector's or Brian Wilson's."

Gold argued that, because Dre recreates rather than samples beats and instrumental work, the finished album's fidelity is not inflected by that of "scratchy R&B records that have been played a million times", unlike productions from East Coast hip hop.

[39] Greg Kot was less enthusiastic in the Chicago Tribune, deeming The Chronic superficial, unrefined entertainment, while writing that "Dre combines street potency with thuggish stupidity in equal measure.

"[37] Village Voice critic Robert Christgau dismissed it as "sociopathic easy-listening" and "bad pop music" whose innovation—Dre's departure from sampling—is not inspired by contemporary P-Funk, but rather blaxploitation soundtracks, which led him to combine preset bass lines with imitations of "Bernie Worrell's high keyb sustain, a basically irritating sound that in context always signified fantasy, not reality—stoned self-loss or, at a best Dre never approaches, grandiose jive.

[45] Select's Adam Higginbotham opined that The Chronic was not as strong as releases from other gangster rap artists such as Ice Cube and Da Lench Mob and found it neither as "musically sharp, nor as lyrically smart as the latter".

[46] Trouser Press noted that "all of Dre's production wizardry can't mask the nasty misogyny that is essential to his mythos.

"[47] In a retrospective piece, Jon Pareles from The New York Times said that The Chronic and Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle "made the gangsta life sound like a party occasionally interrupted by gunplay".

[48] In Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, it was noted that "Dre funked up the rhymes with a smooth bass-heavy production style and the laid-back delivery of then-unknown rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg.

[36] Laura Sinagra, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), said that The Chronic "features system-busting Funkadelic beats designed to rumble your woofer while the matter-of-fact violence of the lyrics blows your smoke-filled mind".

Duff wrote of the album's impact on his status in hip hop at the time, stating "Dre's considerable reputation is based on this release, alongside his production technique on Snoop's Doggystyle" and his early work with N.W.A.

[72] The Chronic brought G-funk to the mainstream – a genre defined by slow bass beats and melodic synthesizers, topped by P-Funk samples, female vocals, and a laconic, laid-back lyrical delivery referred to as a "lazy drawl".

[11] The Chronic is widely regarded as the album that re-defined West Coast hip hop,[12] demonstrated gangsta rap's commercial potential as a multi-platinum commodity, and established G-funk as the most popular sound in hip hop music for several years after its release, with Dr. Dre producing major albums that drew heavily on his production style.