Back on a major label after his late-'90s 3-album sojourn on No Limit, getting his money up after being screwed over by Death Row, Snoop had to prove that he still belonged in the mainstream, so he linked up with current heatmakers The Neptunes & dropped 2 singles: "From the Chuuuch to da Palace," an ego trip over a simple but kinetic beat with live drums, a descending keyboard line & DJ cuts, did pretty well but "Beautiful" was the smash. I loved the latter song because I've always been a fan of single-rhyme rap songs (i.e. 1 rhyme is repeated through the whole song), but the beat was unique for the time as well, built on syncopated strummed guitars & Latin percussion. Although those are the only 2 Neptunes beats on the album, they sum up the record's overall sound: lots of live instrumentation & soulful textures. Snoop's music always owed an obvious debt to '70s funk & R&B, but this album was the first time the scales tipped & he became more pimp than gangsta.
The more organic Paid tha Cost sounds, the better. Synthy, electronic sounding beats like Jelly Roll's duo of dancefloor misfires, "Hourglass" & "You Got What I Want" are almost instant skips, but Jelly redeems himself with "Stoplight," the album's first real song, an interpolation of Parliament's "Flashlight" with mostly live playing. I remember buying this CD at Tower Records in Landmark Plaza, Alexandria VA, putting it on in the car, & jamming out to "Stoplight" while at a stoplight I pronounced it a good record.
Longtime Snoop associate Fredwreck contributes 3 beats, all of which are neo-G-funk, with smoky basslines & portamento synth leads. The best is probably "From Long Beach 2 Brick City," which also has the album's best feature courtesy of Redman. (Like I said about Speakerboxxx, that's high praise when the album has a Jay-Z verse on it. In this case, Hov sounds like he doesn't really want to be there on the fellatio ode "Lollipop," & the star of that song is really Just Blaze, who laces the beat with skanky guitars & a smooth ass flute played by Brian Horton.)
Talking about Fredwreck brings us to "Paper'd Up." There is an unspoken rule in hiphop against doing covers of other rappers' songs. I understand it, because it sort of undermines the whole authenticity thing. But I happen to like covers, & Snoop is one of the few rappers who has done several of them, starting with "Lodi Dodi" on his debut album. "Paper'd Up" is a cover of Eric B. & Rakim's "Paid in Full," one of the few songs that every single hiphop head in the world knows by heart, & he does it justice, tastefully editing the lyrics where it makes sense to. Fredwreck does it even more justice, with a smoky interpretation of the original beat, adding more exotic percussion & a Middle Eastern sounding wordless vocal into the mix.
Hi-Tek, another producer Snoop has a history with, laces 2 beats that are polar opposites: "I Believe in You" is a tasteful jazzy number with electric piano & wah-wah guitar, while "I Miss That Bitch" trips over its robotic & awkward keyboard stabs. The Dramatics show up for the Battlecat-produced interpolation of "I Fell For You" in "Ballin'," a gentle production with smooth electric bass. It's tied for the album's best song with "The One & Only," immediately identifiable as the work of DJ Premier. Preemo brings his signature bounce & scratched chorus to a song that finds Snoop in pensive mode, rapping about his background & his legacy. As I said the last time I wrote about a Snoop album, I like him best when he's deconstructing his own image. Preemo shows up again with "Batman & Robin" featuring underrated lyricist Lady of Rage dropping some clever bars incorporating the names of Batman's rogue's gallery. The song is almost too corny to take seriously, but Preemo manages a great flip of the '60s Batman theme & Snoop & Rage sound like they're having so much fun that you can't help but enjoy it with them. The album ends on a strong note with "Pimp Slapp'd," an overdue Suge Knight diss with plenty of street signaling.
Of course, it wouldn't be a Snoop album without some cringey moments of gender politics, here courtesy of "Wasn't Your Fault," an unironic song encouraging the slapping of women over a boring beat. On the plus side, there's only one of those! This isn't a brilliant album--it's at least 4 songs too long--but at least it isn't frontloaded like a lot of records of this length tend to be. Snoop did what he had to do on his return to the majors, & this record set the stage for his rise to true Bo$$ status.
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