Snoop Dogg released his nineteenth solo album last year, BODR. He also released four more compilations and mixtapes with new music in the same year. Plus a whole new album with all star group Mount Westmore along with rappers Too $hort, Ice Cube and E-40. He could also be heard as a guest artist on a series of songs, as every year. But literally only a fragment of all that current music can be heard in Ziggo Dome on Monday evening.
There hasn’t been a rapper in fifty years of hip-hop who’s been popular with the public for as long and as consistently as Calvin “Snoop Dogg” Broadus; the 51-year-old rapper from Long Beach, California whose best and most influential album is still debut album doggy style is, which appeared 30 years ago this year. Three decades later, Snoop is still selling out a pop hall with room for 17,000 people.
But where the drawling rapper remains remarkably artistically active and productive in the studio, and has experimented freely with vocals and other music genres on his albums in recent years, live Snoop has more than degenerated into a revue artist who lazily rests on his laurels. The rapper mainly lets the nostalgia for his early years do all the work on stage – to long ago, when he broke through as a young rapper and with his mentor Dr. Dre helped popularize the G-Funk movement.
Also read this interview with Snoop Dogg about ‘Doggystyle’ (2011)
Pole dancers
Snoop Dogg kicks off his show Monday night with some timeless Dr. Dre classics. He hasn’t played a song from his solo oeuvre yet, when he’s half-baked along with a verse by Eazy-E, the driving force behind NWA – the rap group with which Dr. Dre ushered in the mega success of gangsta rap in the late 1980s.
The rapper can dream them, just like a large part of the audience: his verses from classics such as ‘Nuthin But AG Thang’, ‘Gin & Juice’, ‘The Next Episode’ and ‘Deep Cover’. Snoop has been doing this for most of his life by far. The pole dancers have been traveling with him from stage to stage for many, many years – he looks at them and raises his eyebrow yet again. Almost the entire show relies on numbers, routines and interactions that he has performed in exactly the same way for decades.
You can hardly blame a rapper like Snoop Dogg – who single-handedly helped slow down his genre – for rapping too casually. After all, it is his trademark, his stamp, his style. But anyone who has seen him many times before can only conclude that he urgently needs new creative energy live.
Because there is little as uninspired in the hip-hop world as the almost identical setlist that Snoop has been performing with for so long. In which the classic beats and verses from his heyday are invariably alternated without any lines with flat dance pop songs and interchangeable guest appearances on disposable hits, while he still has so much stimulating own material in his exceptionally wide oeuvre.
Snoop Dogg is a craftsman who really keeps the party going with his steaming, cool rap style and his strong material. But with his musical mastery, golden oeuvre, and the artistic versatility that he does show on his albums, the bar can also be raised a bit live.