Snoop Dogg/Snoop Doggy Dogg/Snoop Lion fan here. Snoop Dogg recently released an album. It is called Neva Left.
There's no reason that Snoop should release an album in 2017 where the opening lines of the album are "I gangbang to the fullest, a lot of niggas talk about it, but they really don't do it, so I'm doing it for y'all…" (on the album’s title track "Neva Left"). The ENTIRE first song is about being a Crip and gangbanging. One could argue that there’s no reason for Snoop to release an album in 2017 period, however, as a Snoop fan and one who appreciates his existence for many different reasons but most of all for the enthusiastic entertainment he’s provided me over the decades, I’ll lay that argument down by (down by) the riverside. Our lives are better because Snoop is in them.
Back to gangbanging Snoop. Obviously Snoop lived that or some version of that life 20-plus years ago - remember this is the same Snoop, then Snoop Doggy Dogg, on trial for the murder of Philip Woldemariam in 1993 on the heels of his frequently violent magnum opus Doggystyle - but now I see this lanky nigga on TV with Martha Stewart with all the smiles and telling the game he is only supposed to sell, living his best shenanigan-filled life. Which is great for him. I honestly couldn't be happier for Snoop's life; he took his life and made it a career and then flipped it and took white people's money just to do it. Snoop is the uncle we all wish we had (assuming you don't have an uncle like him already).
Can we take a quick sidebar that will probably be lengthy? I think we shall. If you were to ask my what my favorite music from the early to mid 90s was, without hesitation it would all come from the West Coast. I’m a DJ Quik mega-fan, an ardent Death Row supporter, and believe that early Ice Cube is potentially the greatest rapper who ever lived until he died right after releasing The Predator and was reborn as the artist who made a very-forced Lethal Injection. I owned all of those albums and marveled at the production and sound. Being a southerner, the West Coast sound fit my aesthetic more with its car-ready and melody-driven sound. The hip-hop lover in me liked New York rap because with it I wouldn't have my music, but I didn't love it the same way.
Well, considering the heavy amount of West Coast music I listened to, I feel like I owe a very significant thank you to my parents for raising me right. It’s amazing that I wasn’t a 13-year-old raging misogynist with zero regard for women. So much of that early LA West Coast hip-hop was absolutely the most indefensible music, ESPECIALLY in regards to its treatment of women. I mean good gotdamn. There was so much bitches, hoes, rape of bitches and hoes, murder of bitches and hoes alongside the murder and sometimes sodomy of one’s enemies from the other side, etc. I remember thinking about throwing a West Coast-themed 90s party until I realized that it would be five hours of calling women "bitches". I know we all love Snoop’s “Ain’t No Fun”, but Nate Dogg softens the misogyny blow with his sangin' ass vocals to open the song as the the opening RAP bars are: “Well if Kurupt gave a fuck about a bitch, I’d always be broke…” And those were my heroes back then.
I’m obviously not the hip-hop ruined the Black community guy so I'd never go down that road. I do, however, look back at some of those niggas defenses of their discussions of women in music and it’s all stupid and idiotic. They all should be ashamed of their damn selves for attempting to justify those songs. I listened to them and loved them, but there’s nothing to defend. Most of their defenses typically defaulted to “well I’m married and my wife is my manager, so we’re not talking about all women, we’re talking about bitches.” They made it REAL hard to distinguish between the two in their music because it seemed like any woman could be a bitch REAL easily. Even if I didn’t know the term or concept at the time, West Coast hip-hop was a very early education in cognitive dissonance for me as I knew and still know all of the words to DJ Quik’s “Sweet Black Pussy”, potentially the genre’s most asinine backhanded nod to Black women, but could never and would never view women in such a derogatory light.
Back to 45-year-old Snoop. I'm glad rappers are making that prime-time coin in the form of television shows and the like, but I think this is the downside to our current fascination with learning so much about our favorite rappers. It's hard to see you in such an affable manner and then listen to you talk about how hard-body you are, especially when you just sat down at a nail salon with your daughter because her happiness trumps all. It really forces them to sell that "hood reporter" point of view, except they still want to first person it. It's also hard to buy the same 20-year-old content from people we see who clearly haven't lived that life in a LOOOOOONG TIME. And that is made worse by the fact that this Snoop album, in particular, is legitimately tuuuuuuuurble in parts.
Like for real for real tuuuuuuuuuuurble.
The Game did the same thing on Documentary 2, which might debate-ably be the most idiotically Blooded album of all time, which is ridiculous coming from him at this point in life but AT LEAST he's a legit great rapper and the music was fantastic. So we got a great product from a dude whose on-wax life we don't buy. Snoop on the other hand isn't a great or even above-average rapper at this point in life and the music isn't that musical product isn't that good either so it stands out even more and seems EVEN more ridiculous.
It's also funny to hear him say that he's just a seed that was planted by Ruthless. I mean, it's true, but it's just funny hearing HIM say that because of that awfully sordid history, one tremendously downplayed in Straight Outta Compton, the movie.
The album cover is fire though.