Tha Doggfather Review

Everything that made the first one effortless had gone by the time this was recorded. Dre had left the label, the label itself was disintegrating, and the sessions happened in the shadow of an acquittal that should have been a triumph and instead left him exhausted. What arrived is a sprawl of live instrumentation and mild funk that mistakes smoothness for ease.

Snoop Bounce and Vapors are pleasant, the cover of Doggfather and the Roger Troutman collaboration have some genuine warmth, and the voice is still the voice. But the writing is disengaged, the sequencing is shapeless across twenty one tracks, and there is not one moment with the snap of Gin and Juice. It sold enormously on the strength of the last record and was quietly forgotten within a year. As an artefact of a specific disaster it is fascinating. As an album it drifts.