The name, packaging and song titles of Snoop Dogg’s new album Ego Trippin’ suggest a return to the cross-over king’s West Coast gangsta rap origins. However, the 21-track album’s middle song, “Deez Hollywood Nights” – where Snoop raps about partying with Jessicas Alba, Simpson and Biel – portrays this album’s spirit more accurately. Ego Trippin’ is blockbuster rap with enough genre hybrids to please everybody. Except those fans hoping for another Doggystyle, but what fan would want Snoop to grow backwards? That’s regression man.
Among Ego Trippin’s few gangsta rap songs, the best is the southern-styled “Life of da Party,” featuring Too $hort in the album’s only major cameo. “My Medicine,” meanwhile, couldn’t be much further from the blunted marijuana tribute the title implies: it’s a folk-rock Johnny Cash tribute (seriously). Snoop even indulges eighties nostalgia with “Cool,” which is basically a Prince song. This cannibalizing of disparate styles has ruined many adventurous rap albums (Wyclef anyone?). But Snoop’s buttery delivery and Ego Trippin’s prevailing electro-dance production aesthetic keep detours through reggae, rock, Motown, R&B, and even gangsta rap, from seeming too incongruous.
This review appears in the March 19 issue of The L Magazine, and can be read here.
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