At the beginning of 1997, Suge Knight is jailed for nine years for violating his probation: Interscope Records decides to renounce the distribution agreement with Suge's label, and this definitively decrees the end of Death Row. The choice of Interscope is quite serious, it undermines the power of Suge within his own label, the manager will not be able to sell as many records of his artists as he has in the past, and some of them are aware of doing better off Death Row at this point: the label has already seen the departure of The D.O.C. (1994) and Dr. Dre (1996) and, after the death of 2Pac, they left MC Hammer and Tha Dogg Pound. For about two years, the label's top man is Snoop Dogg, but when Suge Knight loosens his deadly grip, a diaspora begins and they all leave: Nate Dogg and Snoop in 1998, Jewell, The Lady of Rage, Michel'e, and Outlawz in 1999.
In 2000, Death Row has no artist in its paddock. It signs Above the Law and Spider Loc, maybe Crooked I is still in the label. It no longer has the power of the past and lives on released discarded and unpublished material from 2Pac archives. After the departure of Snoop Dogg, who signed with No Limit in 1998, Suge Knight starts a smear campaign against him and openly exchanges death threats from prison. Snoop responds with a dissing (2002) and publicly criticizes the manager: he's one of the few artists who's able to record and publish a dissing against him and be alive to tell it.
In the fall of 2000, Suge Knight packs this record, an hour of listening in twelve tracks taken from the material that Snoop Dogg recorded for Death Row and which he has not released. Rhythms are credited to Cold 187um, Daz Dillinger, DJ Pooh, Snoop Dogg, Soopafly, Kurt Couthon, Myrion and L.T. Hutton. Guests are Tha Dogg Pound, Lil Malik, Swoop G, Raphael Saadiq, Val Young, Kevin Vernado, Techniec and Big Hutch. As for the material, there is little to discuss: probably, "May I" is the most successful, thanks to a good melodic production of Soopafly, while in "C-Walkin", we have a more lucid Snoop Dogg than usual, almost cold, he doesn't seem like him.
The other songs are average, there's a reason they weren't released at the time. The record deserves further study for its external connotations to music and rap. The cover, for example, shows at the top a Snoop Dogg who is deliberately placed diagonally with respect to the cover, almost in a parallel position, with his legs fading in the middle of his name has the same color as quicklime, and is divided, at the bottom, by the title in red, a clear threat from the manager to the rapper, again flanked by the name of the alleged author, in yellow. There's a further whammy of Suge towards the rapper: the manager wears Snoop Dogg completely in red, not a random color, Suge is an important member of the Bloods and that is the color of his gang, while Snoop Dogg is a member of the rival gang, the Crips, and he just wore a blue jacket on the latest album he released to date, "No Limit Top Dogg", the previous year, his first since leaving Death Row. On the backside of the CD, Snoop lies in a coffin. For being an independent product, the album has a strong sales response, reaching the top 25 of the pop chart, the top 15 among rap records, third among independent releases, and also ranks in Canada. Not recommended, in any case. 4/10.
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