At this level, Snoop Dogg is legendary for being well-known. He’s been America’s affable, couch-locked uncle for over 20 years now, skating on his delightfully bizarre persona to earn gigs like bonkers sketch comedy host, superstar roastmaster, and primetime Olympics correspondent. He counts Willie Nelson and Martha Stewart as shut private associates, and, whilst he settles into his 50s, nonetheless has the juice to outline the discourse for a number of days at a time.
For years, music has appeared like a little bit of an afterthought for the rapper who as soon as helped outline the West Coast gangster-rap template. His 1993 debut, Doggystyle, stays his most (maybe solely) important launch. He’s finished stints as a No Restrict soldier, an envoy of the Star Trak/Virginia Seaside sound, and a born-again Rastafarian. And there are gems sprinkled all through his three-decade physique of labor, like 2013’s Dâm-Funk collaboration 7 Days of Funk, the vibey mid-life stock-taking of 2017’s Neva Left, and the plain bombshell “Sensual Seduction” (the express model, “Sexual Eruption,” lays it on a bit too thick). However there are additionally loads of missteps, like 2024’s Missionary, a second full-length album with Dr. Dre (their earlier report collectively was Doggystyle, get it?) that vacillates between mildly entertaining and sort of embarrassing.
As of late, his data principally really feel like low-stakes kickbacks, as if he dropped respectable cash on studio time however nonetheless made certain everybody bought residence by 5. Iz It a Crime?, his twenty first album and third as CEO of the lately resurrected Demise Row Information, is slick and frictionless, unencumbered by something resembling overthinking. It’s an aggressively OK pay attention, stuffed with expensive-sounding, groove-first songs that don’t actually lead wherever, besides perhaps to the cooler to seize one other chilly one. That is session beer music, finest when performed at mid-volume on a pleasant day, augmenting the vibe with out ever overtaking a dialog.
If you happen to resolve to concentrate, you’ll discover a mixture of sometimes tight songwriting and a few completely weird decisions. The album begins with a surprisingly impressed four-song suite, a revitalized-sounding Snoop dropping into the pocket like melting caramel. He flexes a bouncy, spring-loaded circulation on the plush, Sade-sampling title observe, and the satisfying “Refined Crippin’” appears like a West Coast model of Rick Ross’ gold-plated opulence on Deeper Than Rap. Issues begin to get shaky with “Can’t Wait,” a synth-funk lower that options Bay Space rapper LaRussell, whose verse is basically about how cool it’s to be on a jam with Snoop (an idea that will get the complete therapy on the thumping-but-vacuous Sexyy Pink collab “Me N OG Snoop”). The wheels come fully off with “Can’t Get Sufficient,” a grown and attractive ballad that brings Iz It a Crime?’s momentum to a screeching halt. Although it’s about relationship longevity, Snoop sings his verses with a muted model of Rihanna’s bellicose supply on “Bitch Higher Have My Cash,” explaining to his woman that he’ll “fuck up [her] thoughts.”