“Oh no, big Snoop Dogg” For 2 decades now, Calvin Broduas a.k.a. Snoop Dogg has been shaping music and fashion. Coming through the door on the heels of Dr. Dre, Snoop became his own man, changing his sound and voice over the years as times and music changed. At no time, did you really feel like Snoop ever fell off.
Yet, this new album, Neva Left feels like a comeback on the levels of LL Cool J when he dropped Mama Said Knock You Out. Like L.L., Snoop was teetering between becoming a full on pop star with television shows and other media properties that seemed to take more precedent than his music career. Lately, he’s even had his hands in the record business again, relaunching his Doggstyle Records imprint.
Right when you thought that Snoop might be taking a long hiatus from the music, he lets us know that he Neva Left. The 16-track album is a mix of the old Snoop Dogg and a new Snoop Dogg, ready to show a new world of fans that he’s more than a funny caricature of himself that you might see on vh1 occasionally.
“Swivle” featuring Stressmatic from The Federation, “Big Mouth” and “Toss It” will remind you of, “Slim with the tilted brim” from back in the day. Tracks like “Trash Bags” featuring K.Camp show that show that Snoop can still appeal to a younger crowd.
The controversial “Lavender” featuring KAYTRANDA and BadNotGood also showed that Snoop will voice a political view, no matter how controversial
Never far from his smoker roots, “420 (Blaze up)” featuring Devin The Dude and Wiz Khalifa and the posse-cut “Mt. Kushmore” featuring Redman, Method Man and B-Real help him keep it real with the tokers.
Guest spots from the likes of KRS-One and Big Bub, Charlie Murphy and to the late Teena Marie help Snoop blend as many eras as possible on this album.
While at times, the album comes off like one big collab project, Snoop does right by his fan base with Neva Left. Whether you met him in the early-90’s like me, our just found out that he does music after seeing him with Martha Stewart one night on TV, Snoop gives you many reasons to remember that he is one of the greatest to ever touch a mic.
Stream, Neva Left here