Sixth studio album by Snoop Dogg. The rhythm set is signed by some of the best producers on the circuit, such as Battlecat, E-Swift, Just Blaze, Hi-Tek and DJ Premier. In addition to them, Fredwreck, Jelly Roll, Meech Wells, The Neptunes, Keith Clizark, L.T. Hutton and Josef Leimberg. Daz Dillinger produces the bonus track. Guests are Lady of Rage, RBX, Nate Dogg, Warren G, Lil' Half Dead, Soopafly, Jay-Z, Redman, Pharrell Williams, Charlie Wilson, Traci Nelson, LaToiya Williams, Mr. Kane, Goldie Loc, E-White, and Ludacris. On the cover, Broadus breaks away from the gang symbolism that had marked his latest LPs with No Limit and decides for black and white.
It's a quite curious album, the author completes the thematic transition started in the previous projects by permanently switching from gangster to pimpin' topics. Like all four previous LPs, the index veers towards production because it's the one who puts down this effort: the "Nas formula" (en: more producers sparse in the LP) doesn't reward him even this time, on these rhythms, the boy doesn't carve any song worthy of note or memorable.
"Paid tha Cost to be da Bo$$" doesn't start well: on the first track there's a funky production synthesized in a simplistic way by E-Swift, which imitates Dre without making any effort, providing a bad rhythm on which the rap is murdered by mixing. "Stoplight" is one of Snoop's few solo tracks and featured the only decent beat out of three by Jelly Roll, which is then placed just before Preemo beats, and consequently his budget choices sound worse than usual. The Neptunes arrive with a track destined for the charts, so, it's up to a ballad to raise the level of the tape and in particular, to the hook of LaToiya Williams, who's the first guest not to disappoint, accompanying Snoop's laid-back rap with a good rnb chorus on a Hi-Tek melodic production.
Just Blaze creates one of his least inspired productions for "Lollipop", full of ugly sounds, luckily, Jay-Z refreshes the song and the whole album with great flow. Two more ballads follow, the first better than the second with Pharrell, and we arrive at "Paper'd Up": agile and fresh soundscape, uptempo, by Fredwreck, confident and quick rap by Snoop Dogg, hook by Traci Nelson and Mr. Kane. It's one of the best songs, made on the same sample that Rakim uses in "Paid in Full". Another bad bouncy rhythm ballad, then "Bo$$ Playa", the next one is another bad production. After fifty minutes of material, comes "The One and Only", fourth solo cut. It's a normal, quiet song that doesn't tell you anything at all. There are scratches, the uptempo drum is heard, there are samples, the rhythm is actually good, but after so much mediocrity, you don't pay too much attention to it. Why is Snoop Dogg delivering with so much energy? It's almost hardcore. At first listening, disinterested, it goes unnoticed.
From the tracklist instead, this turns out to be a Premier. Paying attention, all the elements are there, Primo also introduces the song and then wraps it with his typical three-second loop: the beat sounds better than the rest, but not so much better to stands out easily. The MC is really inspired, energetic, smoothness, it's certainly a good track. The final section replicates the previous ones. Hi-Tek's rhythm is decent for track fourteen, while "From Long Beach 2 Brick City" features Nate Dogg, Warren G, Redman and Snoop on the same track, on a bouncy production with mobb vibes created by Fredwreck.
At this point, I think the boy is the best producer of this CD and deserves his props: before this record, according to me, the best beat of a track on a Snoop album had been signed by Dr. Dre (2000), Dr. Dre (1999), Beats by the Pound (1998), Daz Dillinger (1996) and Dr. Dre (1993). There are two other generic pieces (in one there's Luda), before "Batman & Robin", which pays homage to the successful series and the sixties film: the musical carpet is great, cinematic, Snoop Dogg & The Lady of Rage deliver back n forth for five minutes on a "comic book production" that turns out to be a second Premier. Detached from the rest of the album by a skit, there's "Pimp Slapp'd", dissing against Death Row, Suge Knight and his cousin Kurupt, released from Death Row in 1997 with Tha Dogg Pound and then rejoined the label in 2002 with the role of vice-president, starting a feud with Snoop that ended in 2005.
Released by his label and EMI, via Capitol, the album is distributed by Priority, continuing the rapper's negative commercial parable: for the first time he doesn't enter the top ten of the Billboard 200 and doesn't go beyond the third place in the hip-hop chart, being certified platinum in a few months. It's a discontinuous album, if I look at my tracklist, it's a continuous swing between decent-good and bad tracks, and the good ones are often rnb tracks: with 79 minutes of material of which only a fifth is valid, the product is positioned in the good side of the rapper's discography, anything but essential. 6/10.
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