New Leash On Life

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Snoop wants out of the dog-house. Snoop Dogg was one of gangsta rap's first megastars, but as of late, his album sales have slumped. This year Master P, the head of the New Orleans-based label No Limit Records, is the top dog in the gangsta world: Master P's current solo album sold more than 400,000 copies in its first week out; at the upcoming MTV Music Video Awards, he'll be a featured act. So Snoop has allied himself with No Limit, declaring himself a "No Limit soldier," sharing in Master P's heat, his street cred. When Snoop's new CD, Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told, comes out on Aug. 4, it's expected to be a huge seller. "There was no other choice but to be there [on No Limit]," says Snoop. "[Other labels] couldn't provide for me the way P and them could."

The question now is this: Will Master P be a good influence or a bad one? Will he be Snoop's Obi-Wan Kenobi or his Darth Vader? Certainly, Master P lacks no talent in the marketing department. In a few short years he has built impressive brand identity, and every few weeks a new No Limit album by a previously little-known performer debuts in the upper reaches of Billboard magazine's album charts. One of his slyest techniques is to include in his CDs--like his current solo album, MP Da Last Don--promotional materials for his other records.

As for Snoop, he is undoubtedly a charismatic performer. His rapping style has a casual intensity, and he describes scenes of street life with a cool offhandedness, building the tension in his songs in long, lean lines of lyrics, spun out in his Southern drawl. He may be a gangsta, he may have a controversial past, but there is something likable about him, almost fuzzy, sort of cartoon-like, definitely marketable.

So why does Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told have to be such an ugly, venomous affair? Snoop has been in the red-hot center of the hip-hop world for six years. When Snoop was with his old label, the troubled Death Row Records, working with ace producer Dr. Dre, his lyrics were often profane, yes, but at least the music had bounce and life and a sense of almost nihilistic joy. Da Game is a long recitation of familiar gangsterisms--slapping "bitches," giving shoutouts to "niggas," dealing drugs, killing enemies and, of course, getting paid for rapping about it.

Past efforts show that Master P, who is executive producer of Snoop's album, knows his way around a studio. There are a few songs on his CDs Ghetto D and I Got the Hook-Up that have an earthy seductiveness. But he tends to dwell on the same subjects (guns, drugs, women), and he does so with a numbingly brutal attitude and the same spare rhythms and catchphrases (one of his favorites is the primal cry of "Ugh!" to punctuate a song).

Throughout Da Game, Snoop strives to come across as hard, harder than the other charges on Master P's label. The refrain for one song goes "Kill, kill, kill/ Murder, murder, murder." Snoop says he's just being more "confident." But this CD has a stench of evil that's not present in Snoop's previous work.

Why are people drawn to this stuff? The Godfather, GoodFellas, The Newton Boys--America has been in love with the image of the gangster in pop culture for some time. References to mobster films pop up again and again in gangsta rap--Snoop's last CD was titled Tha Doggfather. Snoop, Master P and their cohorts offer another venue for the forbidden thrill of identifying with someone who is outside the law. Gangsta rap, says Snoop, "is like rock 'n' roll. It's going to go through phases, but it's going to be here forever."

Snoop has launched a new phase of his career. He's shooting a low-budget film with Master P, and he hopes to star in other features. He's already planning a new album (an ad for it appears in Da Game). He's even dropped Doggy from his name. What's sad is that Snoop, and Master P as well, could offer much more. They draw lessons from mobster films and fail to learn from the artists who made them. After all, Francis Ford Coppola didn't just direct The Godfather, he also made Apocalypse Now; Martin Scorsese didn't just direct GoodFellas, he also made The Age of Innocence.

America loves gangsta rap because it releases the nation from guilt; it makes it seem as if the disenfranchised actually enjoy their oppression, actually rejoice in living in neighborhoods infested with crime and drugs. Why else would they be rapping about it, and doing so in such a proud fashion? Snoop and Master P rap from the point of view of the drug dealers who are terrorizing poor, urban, mostly minority communities. How much more rebellious it would be to rap about challenging the powerful people who are helping create those conditions. Snoop, however, says protest rap isn't his bag. "I'm not saying I won't do it, but for now I'm cool," he says. "I'm doing what I do."