Snoop Dogg - Malice N Wonderland Review

The Dee-Oh-Double-Gee is back with his 10th studio album. Snoop's been rather prolific lately (three albums in as many years), but Malice N Wonderland feels like a mini-renaissance for the West Coast rapper who's also known for his TV shows, movie appearances, adverts and infamous "izzle" suffix.

After the somewhat overproduced excess of 2008's Ego Trippin' (which, in his defence, was before the official death of Auto-Tune), Snoop Dogg seems to be trying to start afresh. The cover art for Malice N Wonderland harkens back to the cartoony picture on his seminal debut album, Doggystyle which, with Dr Dre's The Chronic, became the sacred text of g-funk and gangsta rap.

For the first few tracks here, Snoop keeps things simple, eschewing proper choruses and hooks to lay it all out with his rhymes. I Wanna Rock is a perfect introduction to the album. A simple beat creates the foundation, a strangely spectral singing of "Snooop Dooogg" haunts the background, and Snoop comes straight out of the gates with lines like "We the West, boy, yeah you see the shirt, smokin' on that Kobe, fuckin' with that purp" and "I'm giggin' on these hoes, do 'em like dominoes, I slap 'em on they back, tell 'em vamanos."...full text While some rappers overuse Auto-Tune, Snoop Dogg seems to be running his career on autopilot. His 10th studio album, Malice N Wonderland, is dominated by the same old gangsta clichés, presented in the same slick cadences he's been using for years, over the same kinds of monolithically booming beats he's long favored. The album's least boring moments come when he waxes sentimental about his longtime wife, often with guest crooners like Jazmine Sullivan and Brandy helping switch up the sonic formula. Otherwise, it's all listenable enough — just nothing you haven't heard him do better before. B-...full text Snoop Dogg returns on the resurrected Priority label, and the savvy businessman and MC has his ears attuned to the charts with few surprises and only momentary bursts of inspiration. “Malice N Wonderland’’ is heavily geared toward hot R&B acts from Jazmine Sullivan to R. Kelly and The-Dream, who all supply the vocal hooks to Snoop’s iconic flow.

The album starts with harder tracks - apparently the malice - but none will light the barbecue because we’ve heard much of this before: brain-fried rhymes and some empty verses about still being top D-O-double-G. Of course, Snoop can make his committed rhymes wildly entertaining (“That’s Tha Homie’’), but this is also someone who was once one of the great narrative MCs.

There’s little of that here. You do get a couple of The-Dream/Tricky Stewart productions, including the catchy raunch of “Gangsta Luv,’’ but their approach, like Snoop’s boasts, are overly familiar. Sullivan adds a tart vocal on the fine Teddy Riley-produced “Different Languages.’’ One of the best songs is an iTunes bonus track, “Protocol,’’ where he dogs Lil Wayne; there’s the old Snoop fire....full text