Pardon the extremely dated maxim, but it’s too perfect: "You can’t teach a dogg new tricks."
Critics have been c-walking up and down Snoop Dogg’s recent transformation from rapper to Rastafarian, becoming the newly baptized Snoop Lion. Snoop’s latest album "Reincarnated" marks the hip-hop legend’s latest reinvention from his days as a 90s gangsta rap pioneer and 2000s hook-smith pop star.
On Metacritic, Reincarnated has an aggregate score of 55 out of 100 for the Lion, with some of the choice reviews calling it "a middling album, at best" and "uneven though sometimes enjoyable." Jon Caramanica from the New York Times comes out the harshest, shelving Snoop's twelfth album as "rank(ing) at or near the top of vexing choices made by once-platinum artists, full of lazy, half-baked pablum that does more harm to Snoop Lion than good for others."
Excuse me, but how much harm can a hip-hop legend do to a two-decade long career that has had him in the cultural zeitgeist since hip-hop’s mainstream acceptance in the early 1990s?
Deep Cover. Ain’t Nuthin But a G’ Thang. Gin and Juice. Snoop Dogg, Snoop Lion, it doesn’t matter what you call him. The fact that Snoop is still reinventing himself calls for us to salute. Hip-hop is still a relatively new genre with only a handful of artists still releasing new material ten or twenty years after their debut. And because it's largely a solo act, it's easier to chastise hip-hop artists for being 'lazy" or out of touch. Bomani Jones put it best: "There’s a difference between being whack and falling off. If you think he’s a whack, you’re either a child or a moron."
While Snoop’s album may have fell off, dude knows how to stoke some controversy. He recently weighed in on Rick Ross’s streak of bad headlines after referencing date rape in a song.
"First of all, we as rappers we have a freedom of speech and our dialect shouldn't be taken so out of context. He has the right to speak on whatever he wants to speak on and that's his perspective. Me personally, as a rapper, I don't have no regrets about what I say, so I wouldn't give a damn about endorsement deals or none of that. If y'all cut me loose than y'all weren't meant to be with me — that's what I say."
Snoop’s pen may have dulled, but his roar is just as loud.
Snoop Lion: manning the free speech barricades since 1993.