As hip-hop and its titanic artists age, there's much hand-wringing over how to do so gracefully. Jay-Z has become a stuffed shirt basking in his wealth, resembling a bourgeois uncle. Nas curdles as the days pass. Dr. Dre retreats like a sneering Sly Stone. Snoop Dogg, unlike his contemporaries, never compels a hand-wring. He is as he's always been-- buoyant, lazy, mischievous, misogynistic-- with a voice that's nearly tactile and a disposition that begs for anything but keen attention. Tha Blue Carpet Treatment, his ninth album, has been hailed a stirring return to the form he presented on his debut Doggystyle-- a somewhat overemphasized idea, but understandable in a year that likely won't be remembered as a special one for rap music. What the album actually does is present a calming looseness-- nothing shocking or obscure, and better for it. Pop it in and clean your bathroom. Or go for a run. Or bring it to a party. Or the strip club.
Snoop Dogg is too culturally ubiquitous (lest we mention the abhorrent endurance of 'izzle' jokes) to scoff at pop, but there was an interesting moment at this year's MTV Video Music Awards. As the Pussycat Dolls accepted their award for Dance Video of the Year for "Buttons", they thanked Snoop for his contribution to the song, an indolent verse. The camera panned to Snoop as lead Doll Nicole Scherzinger cooed his name. Snoop responded by paying her no mind, scowling in the opposite direction as though someone had openly thanked Pol Pot. An amusingly awkward moment, certainly, but also a sort of turning point for him. Tha Blue Carpet Treatment is not so much a rejection of pop, as a conscious move towards integrating gangsta tropes with the accessibility of collaborators like R. Kelly and Akon afford.
Snoop rarely says anything of note in his rhymes-- he is the truest all form-no content MC of his era. But there are moments here where the form is so impeccable that the absence of ideas is almost a positive. "Think About It", a smooth bit of L.A. sunshine soul, crackles with meticulous delivery. To wit: "Incredible, forgettable, better blast past the mood of mine/ Many men were eradicated by music mine/ Open your eyes and take your time to visualize/ And once you decide to move your mind in due time/ It's so erotic you been exotic it's gettin' naughty/ Freeze and groove you're rowdy, rowdy girl, move your body/ It's melodic I'm being honest and modest/ You done fucked off my whole rap flow, think about it." Those rhymes are vacant, but so captivatingly delivered, we can't help but be drawn in.
The assemblage of collaborators here is obvious at times, inspired in others: longtime associate Nate Dogg croons on the indelibly funky Fredwreck-produced "Crazy", Kurupt snarls on two tracks, and the Game delivers one of his harshest verses of the year on "Gangbangin' 101". The vicious Timbaland production "Get a Light" features a combustible chorus from Damian Marley while the downy "That's That" is one of the smoothest R. Kelly team-ups in a long time. Because Snoop has so little to offer thematically and intellectually, it's a relief he's chosen the perfect collaborators at almost every turn-- B-Real, Akon, and the Prince Paul-backed Nine Inch Dix all body their guest spots, too.
Most bandied about is "Imagine", a rare reunion of Snoop and his mentor Dr. Dre, not to mention the brief resurrection of wounded-wing soul man D'Angelo, who sings (warbles?) the chorus. Dre opens the song-- a lounge room piano tumbles down, hard snares clap, orchestral flashes ooze elegance-- wondering what might have happened if Biggie and Pac lived, if Russell Simmons never became a world-beating entrepreneur, if there were no hip-hop. It's a classy affair with an obvious conceit (Imagine if there were dragons and elves, too!) but feels earned coming from Dre and Snoop. This is the kind of nostalgia-baiting maturity 35-year-old MCs should be making.
Of course, like any Snoop Dogg album since Tha Doggfather, Tha Blue Carpet Treatment is far too long, with an intro and 20 full-length tracks. Because Snoop is often without substance, our impulse is to reward him for doing something... anything. But this is exactly what he has done over the last ten years. Some albums are worse than others, but you can count on at least six superb pop songs. Here that ratio is higher, even if the aspirations aren't.
