Snoop Dogg - Paid tha Cost to Be da Bo$$ Album Review

The production is split into three camps, and the album's quality tracks closely with which camp is in charge. The Neptunes supply the two singles, built on sparse, bouncing percussion and electronic color, and they put Snoop in a clean, open space where his voice carries the whole song. Hi-Tek, Just Blaze and DJ Premier bring a harder, sample-based approach that gives the album its East Coast backbone, and the sample sources, from Eric B. & Rakim to Parliament and the Sugarhill Gang, show an album in conversation with hip-hop's whole history. The Long Beach contingent, Fredwreck, Jelly Roll, DJ Battlecat and Leimberg, supplies the traditional bounce. Each camp is good on its own terms, and the sound that results is varied rather than unified.

Snoop's delivery is the thread that holds the pieces together. He raps with the loose, behind-the-beat cadence that has always been his trademark, but on this record he is also willing to sing, to harmonize and to ease into a hook without strain. That flexibility is why the Neptunes tracks work: a stricter rapper would have fought the spare production, whereas Snoop slides into it. His interplay with Nate Dogg, Kokane and Goldie Loc on the more traditional tracks is just as natural, and the guest list is handled with taste. Jay-Z, Ludacris, Redman and Warren G each appear for a reason, not for a marketing line.

The writing is competent and sometimes sharp but rarely ambitious. The album's most common subjects are women, money and status, and the lyrics circle them with charm rather than depth. There are exceptions: the diss record that closes the album has real venom, and the DJ Premier songs push him toward tighter, more focused verses. But the album's central weakness is that too much of its running time is spent on interchangeable seduction songs, and several of them feel like the same mid-tempo idea with different guests. Snoop's charisma carries them, but charisma is not a substitute for a new angle.

A second weakness is the length. Twenty tracks, including a brief intro, a spoken skit and a message track, make this a long album, and its second half is less disciplined than its first. The better ideas are concentrated in the opening and in a few late high points, and the rest is a solid but unsurprising sequence of club and bedroom songs. A tighter selection would have made the strengths harder to ignore and the weaknesses easier to forgive.

The sequencing front-loads the album's biggest ideas and then spreads them thin. The opening run is the best part of the record: a short spoken intro hands off to a quick, funky setup track, and then the album moves into a stretch of ambitious, differently flavored songs that show how much range the new team provides. It feels purposeful, like a statement about who Snoop is now and who he intends to work with.

The middle third is where momentum slows. Several songs in a row use similar tempos, similar vocal arrangements and similar subject matter, and the energy of the opening gives way to a comfortable, even-keeled run that is pleasant without being memorable. Songs that would stand out in isolation blur together when played in order, and the length begins to show. This is the stretch where the album most needs a hard cut or a change of pace, and it does not get one.

The late section recovers with a block of harder-edged songs. A trio of tracks built on DJ Premier and Fredwreck production restores a sense of grit, and the guest verses become more competitive, which seems to sharpen Snoop's own performances. The final run is the album at its most Los Angeles-minded, and the closer is a pointed, antagonistic finish that gives the record a sting it otherwise lacks.

Whether the length is earned depends on the listener. As a collection of strong singles and good deep cuts, it is generous. As a front-to-back album, it would be better at fourteen songs than at twenty. The best way to hear it is to treat the sequence as a playlist with a few clusters of excellence: the opening three or four songs, the late DJ Premier pairing, and the finale. Everything else is a pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but it does not demand the same attention, and the album does not argue otherwise.

Paid tha Cost to Be da Bo$$ sits well below Doggystyle and well above BODR. It does not have the debut's menace, the production unity of Dr. Dre's work or the sense of a new sound arriving, but it does have something the later, more erratic records lack: a clear point of view. This is the album where Snoop figured out how to be a pop-rap star without losing his gangsta credibility, and the best songs prove that the compromise worked. Compared with BODR, which sounds uncertain about what it is, this is a confident record by someone who knew what he was doing.

It is for listeners who like Snoop at his most accessible and who enjoy the Neptunes' minimalist funk. If you want a record that bridges Los Angeles rap and radio-ready pop, with strong guests and a handful of true standouts, this is a good place to start after the debut. It is also useful for anyone interested in how veteran West Coast rappers adapted to the new millennium. Listeners who want a unified G-funk album, deep lyrical content or a tight running time should skip it or program a short playlist.

It has aged better than many records from the same period. The Neptunes singles still sound clean and distinctive, the DJ Premier songs are timeless, and the guest list reads like a snapshot of a particular moment in rap. The weaker tracks, the generic seduction songs and the skits, have not improved, but they never dominated the album's reputation either.

Start with From tha Chuuuch to da Palace for the Neptunes at their most stripped-down, Lollipop for the guest chemistry and Batman & Robin for the DJ Premier edge. For a next step, go back to Doggystyle for the full strength of what he was doing at his peak, or try R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta) for the further development of the Neptunes relationship. The album's real achievement is that, after years of uncertainty, Snoop sounds relaxed again, and that ease is its best quality.