Snoop Dogg BUSH Review

The production deserves its reputation. Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo are credited on every song, with Williams alone on one of them, and they work from a palette that is almost entirely live-sounding: rubbery bass, bright keyboard chords, clipped guitar, claps that lean toward disco rather than boom-bap. Compared with the lean, menacing minimalism of their early-2000s work with Snoop, this is richer and sweeter, and the stacked backing vocals from Charlie Wilson, Pharrell and Rhea Dummett give most of the songs a warm, almost choral finish. As arrangement, it is excellent, and it is the main reason the album survives its own lack of friction.

The issue is what the arrangement does to the rapper. Snoop spends much of the album singing in a low, relaxed register that blends into the mix, and the result is that the voice that defined the West Coast sound is treated as one texture among many. NME called this an odd decision that works, and for several songs it does, because the low-key delivery matches the smooth setting. Over ten tracks, though, the strategy runs down. A rapper whose gift is phrasing and timing loses those advantages when he is not given a verse with a beginning and an end.

The writing is the second weak point. The subject matter is limited to dancing, flirting, smoke and self-regard, and the lines rarely carry the specific, funny detail that made earlier Snoop songs stick. Reviewers who called it a pleasant stroll down memory lane were being kind and accurate in equal parts. The nostalgia is the point, but nostalgia is not an idea in itself, and the album does not give listeners anything to argue with.

Where the West Coast tradition does show up, it shows up as taste. Snoop moves comfortably through a funk and R&B palette that connects back to the music G-funk was built from, and a few guests, especially Kendrick Lamar, bring the kind of lyrical density that the host only occasionally supplies. That tension, between a sound that honors the tradition and writing that does not carry it forward, runs through the entire record.

Still, the sound is distinctive in the Snoop discography. It is not a G-funk revival, a gangsta-rap throwback or a trap-era update. It is a polished, mid-tempo party record with a precise ear for groove, and for a thirteenth studio album from a veteran, that precision is worth noting, even if precision alone does not make a record necessary.

The running order is built for comfort. The album opens with its most direct West Coast gesture, a bass line that echoes the Neptunes sound Snoop helped make famous, and then settles into a groove that rarely changes. The songs run between roughly three and five minutes, and the whole album clocks in under forty-five minutes, which is the right length for a record whose main appeal is atmosphere. Nothing is padded, and nothing overstays.

The cost of that evenness is dynamics. Most of the songs sit at the same mid-tempo, with the same backing vocals and the same warm, clean kick, so the middle of the record blurs. Billboard's complaint that the songs are laid-back, perhaps too much, is accurate: the album does not build tension, so it has nowhere to release it. A listener can put it on, enjoy it, and struggle afterward to separate the third song from the seventh.

The guests do the sequencing work that the pacing does not. The Stevie Wonder cameo near the start gives the opening a lift, and the closer brings in Kendrick Lamar and Rick Ross for the first real change of weight. "California Roll" sets a confident tone, and "I’m Ya Dogg" arrives like a late burst of energy after a long, smooth middle. That final song is the only point at which the album's structure actually pays off, since the guests turn it into a proper rap record for a few minutes.

In a stronger version of this album, the shifts would come more often. A single hard-hitting rap song around the middle, or a cut that dropped the tempo a notch more, would have made the sequence feel like an arc instead of a mood. As it stands, the album is a good half-hour to pass in a car with the windows down, and a less convincing record to sit with and examine.

BUSH ranks well below Doggystyle and well above BODR in the catalog. Against Doggystyle, it is not close: that record fused a new sound, a new voice and a set of vivid narratives into the template for West Coast rap, while BUSH borrows its funk from the same family tree and gives the voice less to do. Against BODR, which scores 5.3 here, BUSH is clearly the stronger record, and Pharrell and Chad Hugo's craft is the reason. The scores reflect that placement, with production highest and originality lowest.

The album is for listeners who like Snoop at his calmest and want a smooth, groove-first record from him. It suits fans of the Neptunes' work, people who enjoy the funk and disco lineage of Parliament and Stevie Wonder, and anyone who wants a short, easy hour of music for summer. It is less suited to listeners who come to Snoop for sharp verses, narrative storytelling or the menace of his early records. Those listeners should skip it and go to the early catalog.

It has aged as a pleasant, unambitious record, and that is neither an insult nor a rescue. The sound has not dated, because the Neptunes' bright funk is not tied to a trend, but the material does not grow with time either. Pitchfork wondered what the same group might have made a decade earlier, and that thought keeps returning: the record is good, and it could have been better when everyone involved had more to prove.

Start with "California Roll" for the cleanest statement of the sound, "Peaches n Cream" for the funk lineage and the Charlie Wilson chemistry, and "I’m Ya Dogg" for the guest verses. If this sets the right mood, go back to Doggystyle to hear the sound that BUSH is quoting, and treat BODR as optional. The honest verdict is that BUSH is a well-made party record that borrows more than it adds, and its best minutes are the ones where the guests carry the weight.