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, movie star roastmaster, and primetime Olympics correspondent. He counts Willie Nelson and Martha Stewart as shut private buddies, 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 completed 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 plain bombshell “Sensual Seduction” (the specific model, “Sexual Eruption,” lays it on a bit of too thick). However there are additionally loads of missteps, like 2024’s Missionary, a second full-length album with Dr. Dre (their earlier document collectively was Doggystyle, get it?) that vacillates between mildly entertaining and form of embarrassing.
Nowadays, his data largely really feel like low-stakes kickbacks, as if he dropped respectable cash on studio time however nonetheless made positive everybody obtained dwelling by 5. Iz It a Crime?, his twenty first album and third as CEO of the just lately resurrected Loss of life Row Data, 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 anyplace, besides perhaps to the cooler to seize one other chilly one. That is session beer music, greatest when performed at mid-volume on a pleasant day, augmenting the vibe with out ever overtaking a dialog.
In the event you determine 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 move on the plush, Sade-sampling title observe, and the satisfying “Refined Crippin’” seems 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 total therapy on the thumping-but-vacuous Sexyy Purple 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 girl that he’ll “fuck up [her] thoughts.”