Snoop Dogg - Neva Left

Pitchfork 70

Like frat parties and Razor scooters, rapping is for the young. Braggadocio, especially when it’s based on how many girls you’re fucking, guns you’re holding, and pounds of coke you’re moving, doesn't look good on older men. And just like a dad trying to hold court in his old football locker room, it comes off as desperate to keep reliving your glory days or, even worse, rap like you’re still on the come-up when it’s well-reported you’ve been tucked away in a mansion for years. With varying degrees of success, rappers nearing middle age have tried to talk about wives and art collections and other facets of adulting, but few of their longtime fans want to be reminded that they’re not 22 anymore. If rap is your means of artistic expression and your way to make a living, what’s a rapper nearing middle age to do?

Snoop Dogg is one of the lucky ones. He’s savvy, maneuvering his career with shows like “Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood” and the endearing documentary series “Coach Snoop” so that his image now reflects a family man who has been married nearly 20 years and is a compassionate role model for the kids in his peewee football league. He adopted Wiz Khalifa early in the fellow weed aficionado’s career, re-upping his relevance and sealing his status as a legend with a new generation. With the launch of his cannabis-centered lifestyle site Merry Jane in fall 2015, he shifted from stoner to a champion of legalized marijuana. He’s so universally adored that Kylie Jenner hasn’t been excoriated for using “Kylizzlemynizzl,” a riff on his popular slang, as her Snapchat name.

Despite those endeavors, the title of his very enjoyable latest album, Neva Left, is accurate. Snoop Dogg really hasn’t ever taken a break from music. In fact, he’s been something of a machine, cranking out almost two dozen records in as many years since the 1993 debut of his bona fide classic Doggystyle.

Happily, on Neva Left, Snoop hasn’t become a grumpy old man, nor is he trying to keep up with the kids. Snoop’s gift is two-pronged: a penchant for always dropping into the pocket and his low, smoky growl of a voice, which curls and stretches words in such a distinctive way no one has ever mimicked it successfully. “Trash Bags”—produced by Atlanta-based Musik MajorX, featuring an Uncle Luke sample and K Camp’s pleasingly detached hook—is the closest Snoop comes to trying on a new style. “Lavender,” produced by BADBADNOTGOOD and Kaytranada, is a gorgeously trippy track, but it’s the foreign entity in a game of “one of these things is not like the other.” Mostly, though, Snoop keeps the features and production within his era—Battlecat, Rick Rock, Devin the Dude, Too $hort.

And why not? It might not always be on trend, but on his 15th studio album, Snoop sounds in great shape and like he’s having the time of his life. “Moment I Feared” features him slipping into double time as nimbly as any young whippersnapper, and just try not to get “Swivel” stuck in your head. Lots of nods to classic records—J-Massive’s “Bacc in da Dayz” samples “Check the Rhime,” “Promise You This” interpolates Too $hort’s (or One Way’s, depending on how you look at it) “Don’t Fight the Feeling”—let old fans reminisce and new ones discover.

Snoop’s other strategy is simply pointing out the obvious instead of trying to be the cool dad, acknowledging his age and offering advice like the OG he is. On “Go On,” an instant cruising classic that indulges his abiding love for slick ’80s R&B, he mentions riding bikes with his grandson in the park. The one dent in his armor is hitting on a girl literally young enough to be his daughter on the fun, degrading (some things haven’t changed) bop “Toss It”: “She say she went to school with my young son … told me that her daddy was a Eight Tray Crip, I did time with the nigga.”

Still, letting go of the good ol’ days is harder the older you get. On “Neva Left,” the album opener, the first words out of Snoop’s mouth are, “I gang bang to the fullest.” The last are shout outs to Crip sets across L.A. and Long Beach. Like Bruce Springsteen sings on “Glory Days,” “I hope when I get old I don’t sit around thinking about it—but I probably will.”