Snoop Dogg - Tha Last Meal

The album's biggest asset is Dr. Dre's mixing credit. He is listed as mixer on most of the first half and several later tracks, and the effect is a consistent, heavy low end that keeps beats from very different producers in the same room. Dre and Mike Elizondo produce a few of the strongest tracks themselves, and their sound is the classic Dre blend of slow, bass-led thump, sparse keys and drums that hit like a dropped weight. Spin described Dre's laconic, by-the-pound thump as the thing that anchors most of the album, and that is accurate: remove it and what remains is a smooth but unremarkable set.

Timbaland is the other side of the production. His stop-start rhythms and bright, bouncy sounds are more modern than anything else on the record, and the tension between his tracks and Dre's is the most interesting part of the sound. Spin was dismissive about the obvious-single quality of his beats, and the criticism has some force, but a Timbaland beat under a Snoop vocal is a combination that works precisely because it is easy to enjoy. The rest of the credits are more mixed. Scott Storch, Battlecat, Soopafly, Jelly Roll and Meech Wells fill out a record that stays in a West Coast pocket, but the quality drops on the smaller credits and the second half leans too heavily on mid-tempo grooves.

One feature of the writing is worth noting: the album borrows a lot. Interpolations of Cameo, Kid 'n Play, the Rolling Stones, the Parliament-Funkadelic catalog and a funk-era bass line appear across the tracklist. That is part of the West Coast tradition, and G-funk always built its hooks from other people's records, but here the borrowed material often does more work than the verse on top of it. The better tracks make the borrowing sound like a choice. The weaker ones sound like a shortcut.

Snoop's own performance is professional and a little sleepy. His drawl is intact, his timing is excellent, and he rarely says anything that could not have been said on his previous record. Kokane appears on eight songs, usually on hooks, and while the voice fits the mood, repetition turns him from a signature into a crutch. Guests like Nate Dogg, Ice Cube and MC Ren raise the temperature when they appear, which says something about how much of the album's energy comes from outside the host.

The weakness is not any one song but the cumulative effect: a lot of competent cuts with the same pace, the same pimp-and-ride subject matter and the same chorus shape. The album is easy to like and hard to remember.

The sequence is front-loaded with Dre. A brief intro hands off to a run of tracks that mix his production credits, a Timbaland single and the first guest features, and the early stretch is where the record feels most like an event. The first half of the album is easily the more convincing, and one posse cut in particular, “Set It Off”, shows what the project could have been if every guest list had been used with the same care: four voices from different corners of West Coast rap, each given a clear lane.

The middle is where the record loses its shape. A skit built on a television courtroom theme and a short solo track mark the halfway point without adding momentum, and what follows is a procession of mid-tempo songs with similar tempos and similar hooks. The longest cut on the album arrives in this stretch, at nearly six minutes, and it does not justify the space. Nineteen tracks is simply too many for a sound this uniform, and the album would have been stronger at fourteen or fifteen.

The back end recovers a little. A couple of the later tracks borrow well-known funk bass lines and land them with confidence, and the closing track, “Y’All Gone Miss Me”, suits the album's farewell theme with its title and its easy, unbothered tone. It is not a grand finale, but a record this relaxed does not need one.

Pacing is the main reason the album ranks below its best moments. A smart sequence would have put the Dre tracks, the Timbaland tracks and the posse cut in alternating order and cut most of the Kokane-hooked mid-tempo material. As it stands, listeners who start at track one get the best version of the record and then slowly lose the thread, and many will leave before the end.

In Snoop Dogg's rated catalog Tha Last Meal sits well below Doggystyle (8.7), which has a narrative eye, a distinctive sound and a cohesion this record never attempts, and comfortably above BODR (5.3), which has neither the beats nor the focus. The 6.9 here reflects a record with good production and a serviceable performance wrapped around thin writing and an indulgent length. Fans of the debut will hear a smoother, more compromised version of the same instincts, and that is about right.

It is for listeners who want polished West Coast funk from the turn of the millennium, who like Dre and Timbaland beats, and who enjoy a relaxed Snoop more than a hungry one. It is less suited to anyone who wants vivid writing, risk or a consistent album from front to back. The last third can be skipped without much loss.

It has aged reasonably well. The Dre-led tracks still sound heavy, the singles still bounce, and the borrowed hooks have become part of its charm. The weaker songs date it mainly because they sound like every other late-nineties and early-2000s guest-heavy rap album.

Start with “Snoop Dogg (What’s My Name, Part 2)” for the Timbaland single, “Lay Low” for the Dre production and the Nate Dogg hook, and “Set It Off” for the cross-generational posse cut. For what to hear next, go to Doggystyle for the original template, or to Tha Blue Carpet Treatment, a later Dre-assisted Snoop record with a longer guest list and a sharper edge. Tha Last Meal is the record where Snoop proves he can make a good album without trying, and the most interesting thing about it is how little that costs him and how little it earns him.