At this level, Snoop Dogg is known for being well-known. He’s been America’s affable, couch-locked uncle for over 20 years now, skating on his delightfully bizarre character to earn gigs like bonkers sketch comedy host, movie star roastmaster, and primetime Olympics correspondent. He counts Willie Nelson and Martha Stewart as shut private pals, and, at the same time as he settles into his 50s, nonetheless has the juice to outline the discourse for just a few 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 accomplished stints as a No Restrict soldier, an envoy of the Star Trak/Virginia Seashore 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 simple bombshell “Sensual Seduction” (the express model, “Sexual Eruption,” lays it on somewhat too thick). However there are additionally loads of missteps, like 2024’s Missionary, a second full-length album with Dr. Dre (their earlier file collectively was Doggystyle, get it?) that vacillates between mildly entertaining and type of embarrassing.
Lately, his information largely really feel like low-stakes kickbacks, as if he dropped respectable cash on studio time however nonetheless made certain everybody bought dwelling by 5. Iz It a Crime?, his twenty first album and third as CEO of the lately resurrected Demise Row Data, is slick and frictionless, unencumbered by something resembling overthinking. It’s an aggressively OK hear, filled with expensive-sounding, groove-first songs that don’t actually lead anyplace, besides possibly 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.
When you resolve to concentrate, you’ll discover a mixture of often tight songwriting and a few totally 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 circulate on the plush, Sade-sampling title monitor, and the satisfying “Subtle 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 minimize that options Bay Space rapper LaRussell, whose verse is actually about how cool it’s to be on a jam with Snoop (an idea that will get the complete remedy on the thumping-but-vacuous Sexyy Crimson collab “Me N OG Snoop”). The wheels come fully off with “Can’t Get Sufficient,” a grown and horny 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.”
