Tha Last Meal Review

You can hear him relax within about eight bars. The beats have space again, live sounding bass and treated guitar and the kind of mid tempo swing that lets him sit behind the count, and the difference from the previous two albums is immediate and enormous. Lay Low is the headline, a huge posse cut with a Dre beat that rolls rather than punches, and Snoop Dogg (What's My Name Pt. 2) revisits an old idea without embarrassing it.

Wrong Idea and Loosen Control keep the funk end honest. It is still too long, still carries three or four tracks that exist to fill a contract, and nothing here reaches the debut. But the writing is engaged, the jokes are back, and the record has an actual mood instead of a delivery date. This is the one to reach for if you want the mature version of what he does.