[Hip-Hop]
Snoop Dogg
Ego Trippin’
*** 1/2
First, the commercial with Lee Iacocca. Then an MTV sketch comedy. Now an E! reality show—in which he raps, “This ain’t the Huxtables, but we livin’ comfortable”—and syndicated columnist Will Durst proffering him as GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s potential running mate. (He “puts the shasizzle back in the campaignizzle,” Durst jokes.)
By virtue of his pop-cultural assimilation and ubiquity, Snoop Dogg long ago moved out of the realm of rapper and into that of entertainer. (Though his frequent legal issues—three in 2006; one weapons and narcotics charge last year—are very much rapper-like).
The focus on creating a Snoop Dogg conglomerate showed in wonkish efforts (2004’s Rhythm & Gangsta and 2006’s The Blue Carpet Treatment). So it was a bit unnerving to hear the Boss Dogg, in an interview for Ego Trippin’, talk openly about letting people write for him. Maybe it was for the best, as his ninth solo album is just lyrical enough, just quirky enough, just Snoop-ish enough to actually be good.
Only in spurts do we get Death Row-era Snoop, i.e., the gang-banging “Sets Up.” And that’s okay. Producers DJ Quik and Teddy Riley—with assists from notables like Whitey Ford—craft interesting soundscapes for Snoop to flow on. “Sexual Eruption” evokes his inner Roger Troutman, while the tarty backdrop on “Cool” riffs off Prince, circa 1980s. “Staxxx in My Jeans” finds Snoop slow-rapping over screwed and chopped beats, while on “Deez Hollywood Nights” he brags about bagging Leo DiCaprio’s groupies.
Other standouts include “Neva Have 2 Worry”—he’s introspective in a way we’re not used to, touching on Suge Knight’s death threats and commercial flops—and the emotional “Can’t Say Goodbye.” Snoop posits that he’d still be a street thug if he “couldn’t write a verse.” Thank God for his writing skills—and those of his ghostwriters. –Damon Hodge
[Joke-Folk]
Adam Green
Sixes & Sevens
***
When your former band is called The Moldy Peaches and you put yourself at the forefront of the “anti-folk” movement, you know a thing or two about managing expectations. A lot more smart-ass than, say, Ben Kweller but not as clever as Stephin Merritt, longtime Strokes pal Adam Green has made a decent enough career for himself with two-minute, one-joke songs about boho chic and unrequited crushes and doing just enough to get by.
And even now that his former bandmate Kimya Dawson is all over the Juno soundtrack and The Moldy Peaches’ “Anything But You” has become the signature song for the surprise smash movie that’s grossed nearly $200 million worldwide, you just know that this calculated slacker isn’t really going to try harder. Like, why bother?
Green’s latest solo album is full of quick—but of course not slick—ditties that won’t quite change your life but could make your afternoon a little more pleasant or your late night a little more melancholy.
Juno lovers might dig the especially tender songs like “Be My Man,” “When a Pretty Face” and the especially lovely ballad “It’s a Fine.” At heart, Green, despite all his archness, is a romantic. You’ll hear this all over the album: “Morning After Midnight,” “Twee Dee Dee,” “Getting Led,” “Drowning Head First” and even “Grandma Shirley and Papa,” which starts with a line about nose-picking. That’s typical Adam Green, of course. –Andy Wang
[Indie Rock]
The Kills
Midnight Boom
***
When I saw The Kills perform a few years ago, I walked away feeling gypped. Onstage—augmenting the London boy-girl duo’s guitar-and-vocals alignment—sat a drum machine, a sound component inherently unbecoming for a stripped-down, dirty-blues-rock twosome. Just try imagining The White Stripes go at it alongside a pre-programmed synthesizer, or The Black Keys rage with a laptop in their midst. Ew.
Of course, visually observable inconsistencies don’t elicit quite the same dread on record, so Midnight Boom, the third album from Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince, should be a decidedly easier sell for the pair than its off-putting live show. If anything, The Kills manage to use their unorthodox backing beat to their advantage this time out, ditching sparse, metronomic pulsing for dynamic electronic rhythms on the majority of the disc’s 12 tracks.
The cuts that best integrate the band’s “third member”—throbbing, Breeders-esque “Tape Song,” blustery sleaze-pop treat “Last Day of Magic” and wistful quasi-ballad “Black Balloon,” for example—might actually get me out to another Kills gig one of these days, to see whether the man/woman/machine arrangement has legs after all. But the tracks that sound more like the work of two musicians and a trashy piece of gadgetry—say, “Cheap and Cheerful”—practically beg out loud for a trio of the all-human variety. –Spencer Patterson
[Alt-Lite]
Counting Crows
Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings
***
It’s been six years between albums, but a handful of tracks on Adam Duritz & Co.’s fifth studio effort have been kicking around even longer (see Recovering the Satellites-evoking guitar rager “1492” and the Ryan Adams-bolstered “Los Angeles”). The big question, then: Is it worth the wait?
The Bay Area roots-rockers who exploded with 1993 debut August and Everything After have long plumbed the depths of introspection and all the self-aggrandizing, self-loathing and self-destruction that entails. Even bubbly pop-chart toppers like “Accidentally in Love” belie a darkness at the narrator’s core. Following suit, SNSM’s two distinct halves are united not so much by tempo as by theme: Saturday Nights concerns wreckage; Sunday Mornings, rebuilding. A great concept, but unfortunately only about half of each half pierces with the depth of a “Round Here” or “Long December.” For every cinematic fever dream of “Cowboys,” harrowing sweep of “Insignificant,” bittersweet optimism of “Washington Square” or folky meta-abstraction of “When I Dream of Michelangelo,” there’s overwrought, occasionally recycled filler that comes across as cloyingly hypersensitive rather than perceptive.
Is it as good as August, or even Satellites? SNSM falls short of both marks, but it does recall the best elements of both. And after 15 years of career ups, downs and just plan bottoming-outs, that’s certainly achievement enough. –Julie Seabaugh
[Pop]
Various artists
Randy Jackson’s Music Club Volume One
* 1/2
For people who love the NOW hits compilations but don’t have the time to wait for six months’ worth of disposable Top 40 pop to be collected into the next edition, Randy Jackson’s Music Club Volume One aims to be the perfect substitute. Masterminded and produced by American Idol judge Jackson, Music Club is a schizophrenic collection of generic, slick pop songs from a wide variety of genres, including R&B, dance, hip-hop, adult contemporary and country.
Getting the most attention is lead single “Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow,” the first new song in 13 years from Jackson’s fellow Idol judge Paula Abdul. It’s three minutes of anonymous dance-pop, with Abdul’s voice overproduced enough to prove that she doesn’t possess anywhere near the vocal prowess of the singers she judges on TV.
Not that many of them show up here—only Katharine McPhee and Elliott Yamin appear, dueting on the mildly funky “Real Love.” It’s one of the more successful tracks, but most of the songs more closely resemble “Dance”: pale imitations of the most popular examples of their genres.
Jackson tries everything and excels at nothing (the country tunes are especially awful), and in the process attempts to jump-start the careers of a bunch of forgotten and forgettable pop singers in whose careers he apparently has a stake. As cynical and manipulative as the NOW compilations are, at least they’re full of music people actually liked; Music Club is just hoping that you won’t notice the difference. –Josh Bell