By Jose Alvarez | Staff Witter |
After the failed attempt of changing his persona to Snoop Lion a couple years back, Snoop Dogg is back releasing his new album “Bush,” on May 8, with Pharrell Williams as his main producer.
With Mark Ronson’s hit single “Uptown Funk,” Kendrick Lamar’s new album “To Pimp A Butterfly,” and now Snoop Dogg’s new album “Bush,” it seems like funk is making a comeback.
There are all sorts of big names featured on this album, ranging from Pharrell Williams to Stevie Wonder, T.I., Rick Ross, and even Gwen Stefani.
My expectations were simple, I expected that with the name Snoop Dogg making a return, we would see some of that old school west coast rap that got him to where he is today.
From track one, “California Roll”, it was easy to tell what the vibe of the album was going to be.
Pharrell’s style of production clearly took charge of the album, making it have a real strong pop feel to it.
“As soon as I started playing the album on Spotify I knew this was not going to be my kind of album, every track after that was predictable and expected,” said student Tyler Lopez.
“We all should have seen this uplifting and happy tone coming with that ‘Peaches and Cream’ single,” Lopez continued.
Lyrics like “She bout to go in/ she likes that low end/ damn her ass is so big/ just keep it bumpin’, peaches and cream!” held the album back in my opinion.
This is where my main complaint comes in, I felt like lyrics were weak when compared to other albums in his discography such as “Doggystyle.“
“I wish there was more to listen to than just the beats and melodies, some compelling lyrics would have been nice but I’m sure the majority of people will eat it up since the beats are pretty catchy,” said student Bernard Munoz.
Something that many modern day albums get wrong, they never sound cohesive or consistent, but this album was done right by sounding complete.
Usually all the songs just sound random and thrown out there, but this is due to the various producers that someone works with. Everyone wants to add their own flavor and style into the mix.
“It is no wonder this album has such mixed reviews, this is neither the classic Snoop we heard back in the 90s nor the Snoop he claimed to be back in 2013,” continued Munoz, “Rather we get this new overjoyed Snoop Dogg who seems confused about his musical direction and it just seems like he is looking for anything to put out just so he can stay relevant.”
Snoop did a little too much singing in this album for my taste. I feel that he attached the name “Snoop Dogg” to it just so it would sell.
Williams worked on “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk, so I think the pattern is easy to spot.
His style of funk is quite visible within this album which contributes why the album sounds different from the rest of Snoop Dogg’s older albums like, “Doggstyle” and “The Doggfather” which released almost two decades ago.
You can download the album now on the Google Play Store or on iTunes for only $9.99.
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