The latest LP kept Calvin "Snoop Dogg" Broadus off the charts, sensationally. How is it possible? Wow, I just don't know. Look at that cover, it's tough there. He put the "$" in place of the "s" in the title. He put DJ Premier into production. He put Pharrell into production. He put Pharrell to sing. He put Kokane to sing. He put Nate Dogg to sing. Everyone is singing. Hell, there is Jay-Z, Ludacris, Redman, Warren G, Lady of Rage. The cream of the cream of the cream of the decade in rap. If you don't have two of those names among your top five, then maybe you know hip-hop too well and, in that case, you're in the wrong place. There are samples, club tracks, dissing tracks, rnb tracks, hardcore tracks, everything is there. Music critics cannot afford to say absolutely anything about this album, despite it being actually terrible. No commercial mistakes were made.
Yet, in less than two years, over 200,000 physical copies have disappeared between the first week of the No Limit albums and this one, which sold less than half of "Tha Last Meal": it's in these moments that you understand how much Master P knows how to do his job. He's still the only one to have brought a Snoop record to the top of pop albums and is the only one to have a Snoop multi-platinum record, after his Death Row period, of course. Now, two years after the last effort, Snoop aims to get back to where he belongs, on top of the world of the music industry. To do this, he relies on Pharrell Williams, the great protagonist of "Beautiful", Snoop's single with the greatest mainstream success up to that moment: the Californian rapper moves from the Capitol Records to the Star Trak founded by The Neptunes, which is always linked to EMI, therefore to the same major responsible for his mainstream collapse. Star Trak leaves Virgin / EMI and joins to Geffen Records, a subsidiary of Universal.
The Neptunes is expected to produce the entire album, however, they're credited with five out of twenty tracks: the other beats come from The Alchemist, Hi-Tek, Lil Jon and Mr. Porter, among others. The others don't deserve to be mentioned, their production is embarrassing. A note of merit deserves L.T. Hutton: "Can U Control Yo Hoe" is one of the low points of the year in all genres, and if it's not the worst thing that Snoop Dogg has ever released, it comes very close. But L.T. Hutton does a peerless masterpiece of trying to cover up these misogynistic lyrics with an illegal rhythm. As for the guests, Snoop Dogg brings to his album the best that rap has to offer: Pharrell, Lil Jon, Trina, 50 Cent, Justin Timberlake and Nelly. Most of these 78 minutes is sung, there are a lot of tracks for the club, several ballads, rnb hooks, but no rnb songs. No rnb song has such indecent and impossible-to-listen, anti-melodic rhythms.
The Alchemist provides an almost good production in the intro, and everything else is almost impossible to hear. Pharrell creates three strong singles on the charts, one worse than the other: worst of all is "Drop It Like It's Hot", which is also the most successful of all. Snoop has never even been first in the Hot 100 before (he was close with Dre's "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" on his debut), he will return with Akon (2006) and finally with Lady Gaga (2010).
That single comes out two months before the album and launches it towards mainstream glory, but the run-up is too long and the LP arrives completely exhausted at the moment of truth: sixth in the pop chart, third among rap records. Seventh consecutive platinum disc in just one month, certifications in ten countries on three continents, but who wants those huh? If not even the biggest producer of the moment can bring it back to the top, nobody can. After holding back with his previous releases, some critics decide to vent their frustration here, with a project that yes, it's shoddy, it's his worst effort ever, but it's not that different from the last one: Pitchfork picks up a fair review for once and awards a brutal 2.1/10, NOW does even better by lowering the rating to a still generous two-tenths. 2/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment