Another album from Death Row’s zombie era suffers from basically everything, but there are hints of soul and funk to keep things interesting.
It makes sense why Snoop Dogg would buy the Death Row trademark. After founder Suge Knight filed for bankruptcy in 2006, it was passed like a hot potato among holding companies and distressed-asset managers. Snoop acquired the brand and his own back catalog in a 2022 deal, treating them as low-overhead intellectual property—which may explain the abundance of screen-printed Death Row gear at your nearest Burlington Coat Factory.
Snoop didn’t manage to get his hands on The Chronic or 2Pac’s masters, so he’s mostly building a streaming catalog from scratch. These latter-day Death Row records hew to a formula. Snoop clears a few blockbuster samples—Sly Stone, the Police, Tom Petty, whatever—enlists Jane Handcock and October London for cut-rate R&B hooks, and keeps his fingers crossed. The proof-of-concept was 2017’s overachieving Neva Left, which found Snoop freestyling over the “C.R.E.A.M.” and “Check the Rhime” instrumentals (turns out autopilot Snoop is still pretty good!), but it’s been diminishing returns ever since, bizarre jumbles gaming one algorithm or another.
Tales From My Hood’s quirks can be chalked up to Snoop’s erratic business sense. (Why is it named after a mid-’90s B-movie that disappeared from cable ages ago? Why do these albums always have pictures of the artists from 30 years ago?) A full-length from Dogg Pound rapper Kurupt and L.A.’s DJ Battlecat bears all the hallmarks of Death Row’s zombie era: random medleys, unimaginative samples, features for unknown labelmates, seemingly AI-generated album art. A song like “Mindstate” captures all the highs and lows. Indie darling Ill Camille kicks off with a spoken-word intro; BJ the Chicago Kid pipes in with elegant, multi-tracked harmonies over a tastefully spare percussion track. Kurupt flashes an off-kilter flow and five-dollar adjectives, giving way to a 90-second guitar coda. There’s plenty to like about the roster and the blues-club intimacy, but in lieu of trajectory and transitions, it’s a total hodgepodge.
The soul and funk interpolations scattered throughout Tales From My Hood are similarly hit-or-miss. The nadir is “I Don’t Luv Her,” an obvious New Edition flip with verses from Dogg Pound sideman Soopafly and Mississippi rapper Akeem Ali, sandwiched between another BJ hook; it beggars belief that these guys ever shared a room. On the plus side, there’s “Me N the Boyz,” which barely strays from its Mothership Connection source material. It’s a can’t-miss sample—Battlecat layers fresh drums and horns, ceding the stage for one of Kurupt’s brightest performances in years. He’s buoyed by pure instinct, recapturing the charismatic warmth of “Welcome Home” and “Where I Wanna Be.”
Tales From My Hood coheres around P-Funk homage, both in Snoop’s Bootsy Collins impression on “Sneak Attacc” and the “(Not Just) Knee Deep” horns on “Wat U Do to Me.” Although smoked-out vibrance is Dogg Pound’s stock-in-trade, it’s hard to tell if Tales From My Hood was conceived as a full-throated tribute, or if they couldn’t think of anything else. (They could at least have dialed Kokane or Suga Free for fresh interpretations; Collins and Mr. Clinton are themselves still performing, and have appeared on past Dogg Pound outings.) The same samples have been reheated over and over since The Chronic, and these renditions might’ve turned up on any Dogg Pound project in the last quarter-century. Then again, that’s more or less the point—it’s all grist for Death Row’s licensing mill. If Snoop’s got work for his old pals, that’s just as well.
