For a rapper a full decade off his prime, Snoop Dogg has been doing a remarkable job of media saturation lately. First there was his announcement that he was quitting smoking weed, which got more press response than the last five or so rapper incarcerations. After that, a heartless Bill O'Reilly (of the Fox News Network) charged The Muppet Show with shortsightedness and bad taste for including the rapper in its Christmas special. Presumably feeling the right-wing heat, the Muppet folks removed the newly clean Snoop from the proceedings, with the result that he got even more attention than if people had just let it slide by. But the media blitz leading up to the release of Snoop's newest album, Paid tha Cost To Be da Bo$$ (Priority), started well before the holiday season. A couple months ago, he hosted a half-hour special on MTV called Doggy Fizzle Televizzle, in which he participated in a series of madcap pranks, like harassing customers at a drive-thru window. The same week, he could be seen on MTV's sister channel VH1, hosting their new surprise home-renovation show Rock the House. He painted, he hammered, and he tagged up some poor woman's living room, all in the name of good PR. And Snoop's goodwill didn't end there: more recently the tabloids were deluged with pics of Snoop as the doting parent helping out as the assistant offensive coordinator for his son's peewee football team. And what did the magnanimous rapper do to warrant the press coverage? He bought the team a tricked-out bus for them to travel to games on.

All this attention, and no one even stopped to consider the merits of Paid tha Cost To Be da Bo$$, or the fact that Snoop hasn't made a truly relevant hip-hop album since his debut, Doggystyle (Death Row), in 1993. How has he survived the infighting and backbiting that so often takes its toll on hip-hop careers? In part, it's because he's managed to be in the pocket of one patron or another ever since that debut CD made him a star, from Death Row mogul Suge Knight to No Limit honcho Master P. More important, Snoop has never been an issue-oriented rapper. His most popular songs have been about intoxication, and there's something about his forlorn demeanor that's made him seem tough enough to hold his own among the gangstas without being threatening to a mainstream audience. Even at his most stone-faced (and stoned), Snoop is embraceable in a way few rappers ever have been.

That didn't keep him from veering badly off course on 2001's Tha Last Meal (No Limit). By that point in his career, having traded in Death Row's electric chair for the No Limit tank, Snoop seemed tired of living under the thumb of an oppressive label head and putting his life in jeopardy for his art, and he peppered interviews in the hip-hop press with claims like "This is the last time these motherfuckers are gonna eat off me." He even recorded a track called "Death Row Is Bitches," though he never released it. The tracks that did make it onto Tha Last Meal weren't even remotely compelling. Having become a mere shadow of his former self as a rapper, Snoop had already begun to rely on his status as a media celebrity to make up for what his albums lacked. And given the flurry of silly media attention he was garnering in advance of Paid tha Cost To Be da Bo$$, there was no reason to expect that it would be any less disappointing than the last one.

Lowered expectations may, in part, account for how good the new album sounds on first listen. But the disc goes well beyond merely besting the mediocrity of Tha Last Meal. Not only is it the second-best album of Snoop's career, it also stands up against the finest hip-hop albums of 2002, a slot the Doggfather hasn't occupied in years. The production, courtesy of fresh blood like Jelly Roll ("Stoplight"), Just Blaze ("Lollipop"), and the Neptunes ("Beautiful" and "From tha Chuuuch to da Palace"), is thoroughly modern, and custom-fitted to his weathered, liquor-ish flow. Snoop may still be the master of saying precious little with an overabundance of panache, but for the first time in a long time he sounds slick enough to pull it off.

And when it does come time to make a real statement on Paid tha Cost To Be da Bo$$, Snoop doesn't mince words. "Pimp Slapp'd" is his first officially released jibe at Suge Knight and Death Row. It's a bitter and compelling track, on par with 2Pac's "Hit Em Up." And it's almost totally out of character for a rap icon as relaxed and lethargic as Snoop. But just as he's found freedom from chemical dependency and freedom from business overlords, so he's found freedom of attitude. Here's hoping he won't have to pay for speaking his mind.

Issue Date: January 3 - 9, 2003