Snoop Dogg ought to need no introduction, having crip-walked the Olympic torch in Paris. He is a modern mogul, collaborating to create products from shoes to children’s programs, and now part of a dynamic duo with craft and home icon Martha Stewart. Although also known as an icon for marijuana—with a clever advertisement for lighters that included both Martha and Willie Nelson (a Siri search will reveal a cannabis-focused investment firm, Casa Verde, with a distinct valuation)—the general sentiment toward Snoop Dogg is one of an acceptance that is especially ironic of a culture which seems so determinedly racist.
Known originally as a vocalist in the lyrical form of poetry known as rap, Snoop Dogg’s lifelong dedication is to the intersection of this art form with other means of artistic expression that speak to a specific way of life, a specific culture. Viewers of Snoop’s social media posts are treated to wide ranging considerations: classic cars, ridiculous behavior, awards ceremonies, travel vistas, and his fear of horses. As varied as these endeavors seem to be, we know Snoop for the music.
It was with some anticipation of a return to the original and now-classic collaboration between Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg that the song-by-song release of “Missionary” this past autumn filled up various feeds. A host of Google reviews yields mixed responses, from Maurice Higgins claiming, “album of the year” and citing both the video and how “we need diversity in any music genre for it to creatively survive”, with Scott Johnson calling the album “elevator music”. A more insightful but unappreciative article by Craig Jenkins for Vulture (18 December 2024) calls the record “a precarious balancing act” and calls Dr Dre’s production “the Quincy Jones tradition of studio albums as talent showcases”.
While Johnson mentions the “intricate tunefulness to a wide-ranging set of sounds”, he bemoans the intensity of collaboration taking place on this record, listing the collaborators as disparate elements, instead of contributing to the collage of the whole. This dismissal is contrary to the notes on the release itself, which makes mention of the ekphrastic response to Tom Petty’s “Last Dance with Mary Jane”, and collaborative contributions from 50 Cent and Eminem on “Guns N Smoke”. The pattern of disingenuous response to the record is a bit confusing, as Snoop is still seen in a heroic light.
Perhaps the lack of approbation toward the release is of intricate origin, but the castigation is towards Dre. Jenkins mentions in his article both sad biographical events, yet glosses over “Dre suffered an aneurysm and three strokes in 2021 during an acrimonious divorce”. This ought to create pause.
From a purely sociological point of view, Andre Young is now a disabled person, an irony given the disability jargon of self-reference as Crip, and including an entire lexicon of disability-related cultural language, such as the intensely provocative ‘crip time’. Perhaps and given the recent COVID-backlash-eugenicist-trend of recent years, in combination with the superficial dismissals too often undercutting valid cancelations, it appears that an increasingly physically fragile Dre faces multiple marginalizations.
Yet it is the work that ultimately must speak. While Jenkins bemoans “intended audience” and “crossover appeal”, he seems tone-deaf to the narrative arc that is a distinctive element to Dr Dre recordings, and seems to think that the collaborative elements are “a fishy social media trend. The most obnoxious sample flips are flexes from Dre, who’ll have you know actual Sting plays on the Police remake”. Jenkins also mentions Hamilton in the Pink Floyd remake, but fails to see this recording as a traditional libretto, nor how Dre’s work overall is an ekphrastic response to the Broadway musical, and ultimately opera. Musical remakes of classic story lines of how Baum’s Oz tales became cultural touchstones in various iterations, with the Wiz becoming a now-aging, acceptable influence in Black American culture. In some similar way, the three decades old Dre musicals are so entrenched in our culture that “Still Dre”—with its earworm two-chord repetition—is an available tune for both the Olympics and social media soundtracks. Dismissing the recent work when the viability of previous work is unquestioned has been justified by ageist prejudice, a bigoted superficiality.
In consideration of the Sting-collaborative “Another Part of Me”, the track begins with a seemingly live-audience intro and brief notes before the now-famous, four-chords-in-triplets of “Message in a Bottle” loops in. This loop is the song’s structural element, even though there’s a snare-cymbal holding the lowest tonal line. Snoop’s vocals hold the center of the ear here, although there’s a treble synth line, played as a flute, that seems to both invert and respond to the Sting guitar loop. Note must be taken of the multiple levels of traditional African polyrhythm (which have been cited as an influence upon the Police drummer Copeland’s rhythm structure), as the recording operates as both call and response, and as allusion to music both contemporary and historical. The ekphrastic response in Snoop’s lyrics to those of the original—the plot being that of a castaway—include:
Out here livin’ armed and dangerous […]
Here in the land of the scandalous […]
Ride the wave, hold tight, just a day in Los Angeles
…speaks to the disenfranchisement that sees being cast away as a psychological and social metaphor. While Jenkins appropriately called Dr Dre’s scoring as intricate, this recording is far more sensitive to intricate rhythm structures than seems to be given credence. Following the lines quoted, the rhythm of the lyrical structure changes to troche with “Encore, I’m not done, he is I, one of one”, while keeping to the four-note structure held by the guitar. The lyric weaves both choral, duet and single voices fluidly into a musical moment barely three minutes in length.
While Snoop’s reputation has enough brass for any tarnishing to be welcomed as green, criticism of Dr Dre is a sour-grapes nostalgia for attenuated woofers without acknowledgement of his participation in a musical tradition that precedes written history. There’s an effort in Dr Dre’s work to include the culture of Los Angeles into the lineage that includes such cities as Milan that seems consistently unrecognized. Even the album’s accompanying video, of two rather professional vigilantes, makes allusion to both the gangster symbolism present in the genre, as well as to classical opera—as well as cinema tropes for music videos that includes flaming cars and dancing women. While Jenkins and others seem to be lost in the trance of Dr Dre’s triple engine freight train of musical perception, there’s a juicy auditory buffet that yields even greater flavors with repeat play.
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