Word: snooped
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...Snoop wants out of the dog-house. Snoop Dogg was one of gangsta rap's first megastars, but as of late, his album sales have slumped. This year Master P, the head of the New Orleans-based label No Limit Records, is the top dog in the gangsta world: Master P's current solo album sold more than 400,000 copies in its first week out; at the upcoming MTV Music Video Awards, he'll be a featured act. So Snoop has allied himself with No Limit, declaring himself a "No Limit soldier," sharing in Master P's heat...
...question now is this: Will Master P be a good influence or a bad one? Will he be Snoop's Obi-Wan Kenobi or his Darth Vader? Certainly, Master P lacks no talent in the marketing department. In a few short years he has built impressive brand identity, and every few weeks a new No Limit album by a previously little-known performer debuts in the upper reaches of Billboard magazine's album charts. One of his slyest techniques is to include in his CDs--like his current solo album, MP Da Last Don--promotional materials for his other records...
...Snoop, he is undoubtedly a charismatic performer. His rapping style has a casual intensity, and he describes scenes of street life with a cool offhandedness, building the tension in his songs in long, lean lines of lyrics, spun out in his Southern drawl. He may be a gangsta, he may have a controversial past, but there is something likable about him, almost fuzzy, sort of cartoon-like, definitely marketable...
...does Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told have to be such an ugly, venomous affair? Snoop has been in the red-hot center of the hip-hop world for six years. When Snoop was with his old label, the troubled Death Row Records, working with ace producer Dr. Dre, his lyrics were often profane, yes, but at least the music had bounce and life and a sense of almost nihilistic joy. Da Game is a long recitation of familiar gangsterisms--slapping "bitches," giving shoutouts to "niggas," dealing drugs, killing enemies and, of course, getting paid...
Past efforts show that Master P, who is executive producer of Snoop's album, knows his way around a studio. There are a few songs on his CDs Ghetto D and I Got the Hook-Up that have an earthy seductiveness. But he tends to dwell on the same subjects (guns, drugs, women), and he does so with a numbingly brutal attitude and the same spare rhythms and catchphrases (one of his favorites is the primal cry of "Ugh!" to punctuate a song...