Backspin: Snoop Doggy Dogg — Doggystyle (1993) | by Jeffrey Harvey | Medium

Backspin: Snoop Doggy Dogg — Doggystyle (1993)

Hip-Hop’s first “event album” exceeded expectations and became the template for ’90s G-Funk. (94.5/100)

Jeffrey Harvey

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Image from Death Row Records

Like in sports, the greats in music (particularly the Darwinian pugilism of hip-hop) are separated from the mere skilled technicians by their ability to deliver when the stakes are highest. In 1993, Snoop Doggy Dogg was hip-hop’s most heralded rookie and Doggystyle, his instant classic debut, delivered like a collegiate Michael Jordan swishing the game winning shot for the National Championship against Georgetown.

In hindsight, Dr. Dre deployed every bit of the meticulousness personified in his production in the unveiling of his prized protégé. Despite Snoop’s uncanny ability to glide his nasal drawl in and out of the pockets of a Dre track with effortless finesse, Dre resisted the temptation to saturate his 1992 magnum opus, The Chronic, with Snoop. Instead, the good doctor sprinkled him in like a fine seasoning; just enough to spice up the flavor, while still leaving listeners hungry for more. Featured in all three of Dre’s singles and videos, Snoop’s easy charisma and distinctive style also made him a staple on MTV for most of the year.

Adding fuel to the fire, Snoop was also the defendant in a high profile homicide case set to go to trial soon after Doggystyle’s release, bringing both an element of danger to his mellow gangsta persona, and a sense of urgency. If convicted, Snoop might not get to release another album for a long while. The collective hopes of not only hip-hop, but pop culture hinged on Doggystyle, making it hip-hop’s first “event” album; the type of project historically the domain of rock gods and pop icons, for which frothing fans marked the release date on calendars and camped out in front of record stores on the eve of release.

Snoop forever cemented himself as an icon by not only meeting, but exceeding those outsized expectations. Fully aware of the fervor for more Snoop, the Dr. and the Doggfather used the blaxploitation themed “Bathroom” skit and explosive Lady of Rage showcase “G Funk Intro” to further build the suspense, making listeners wait until the third track to get a proper verse from Snoop. But, when the now iconic “Gin and Juice” kicks in, the payoff is sublime. A sonic marvel in its own right, “Gin and Juice” not only sets the musical tone for the entire album, rooted in the rhythmic bass of George McCrae’s ubiquitous “Get Lifted” break, but launches it into a futuristic funk excursion thanks to hypnotically layered keys a la prime era P-Funk.

If The Chronic was the hip-hop equivalent of mid-70s P-Funk, anchored in gut bucket grit and elevated by futuristic instrumental flourishes, Doggystyle is akin to late-70s P-Funk: crisp, danceable rhythms building to irresistible hooks. In that analogy, “Gin and Juice” is Snoop’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep”: the infectious ear worm that renders your neck just as incapable of sitting still on the thousandth listen as on the first. It’s made accessible by its easy rhythm, and fascinating by an edgy undercurrent. Snoop’s breezy verses build on the melodic debauchery of the track and set the tone for the weed and alcohol fueled house party vibe that carries the album.

With so much drama in the L-B-C
It’s kinda hard bein’ Snoop D-O-double-G
But I, somehow, some way
Keep comin up with funky ass s*** like every single day
May I, kick a little something for the G’s
and, make a few ends as I breeze, through
Two in the mornin and the party’s still jumpin
cause my momma ain’t home
I got b****es in the living room gettin it on
and, they ain’t leavin’ til six in the mornin’ (six in the mornin)
So what you wanna do, sheeeit
I got a pocket full of rubbers and my homeboys do too
So turn off the lights and close the doors
But (but what?) we don’t love them hoes, yeah!
So we gonna smoke a ounce to this
G’s up, hoes down, while you motherf***ers bounce to this

From there, the album races ahead, effortlessly maneuvering musical twists and turns like a finely tuned sports coup. The terse minimalism of the whimsically rapped “The Shiznet” veers into the precise storytelling and futuristic synth groove of the west coast retro-fitted re-imagining of Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s “La Di Da Di” (“Lodi Dodi”). The swirling solo proclamation “Who Am I? (What’s My Name)” gives way to the explosive posse cut, “For All My N****z and B****es.” The furified freestyle of “Gz and Hustlaz,” with Snoop dropping tightly syncopated bars over a heavy acoustic piano and throbbing drums is followed by the ethereally orchestrated “Gz Up Hoes Down” down, with Snoop deploying a loose, airy delivery atop melodic backing vocals.

Snoop Doggy Dogg performing “Murder Was the Case” at 1993 MTV Video Music Awards (Image from MTV/Viacom)

“Murder Was The Case (DeathAfterVisualizingEternity)” is a showstopper on an album chock full of highlights. Over eerily echoed percussions and synths best described as gangsta-gothic, Snoop spins a rivetingly vivid story of surviving the depths of a near death experience to rise to the pinnacle of the drug game, only to end up serving “25 with a izz-L with nowhere to gizzo” in a “level three yard” where the silence of the night is cut with “toothbrushes scraping on the floor, n****s gettin’ they shanks, just in case the war pops off.” It may be Snoop’s finest moment as a writer (with a possible assist from The D.O.C.); at once vivid, cerebral, personal, and universal.

The track’s lyrical virtuosity also serves to inadvertently highlight the album’s one weakness. Perhaps due to the time constraints under which it was recorded (with Snoop possibly facing a murder case in real life, and record stores threatening to cancel advance orders if the album wasn’t delivered on time), some of the rhymes feel thrown together (“So bow down to the bow wow/cause bow wow yippee-yo/ you can’t see my flow”). It’s actually a testament to Snoop’s seemingly effortless mastery on the mic that when he’s in a groove, he can make pretty much any line sound fly.

Too often in critical circles, MCing is measured by the complexity of lyrics and rhyme schemes. In actuality, flow and delivery are every bit as important, if not more, in our gut response to a verse. What Illmatic era Nas was as a writer, Doggystyle era Snoop was as a vocal performer. His inflections and deflections not only provide aural variety, put punch home key lines (“I can’t die, my boo-boo’s ‘bout to have my baby”). He switches tones from, playful to menacing to pondering, with the ease of a master orator.

From performance, to production, to sequencing, Doggystyle immediately established itself as the quintessential G-Funk album; the template that virtually every West Coast rapper and a good number of artists from elsewhere, would attempt to follow over the next couple of years. It upped the ante on song craft and sonic sophistication, while establishing Snoop’s smooth talking, weed-mellowed, blaxploitation inspired gangsta-pimp as one of hip-hop’s definitive personas. In doing so, it completed an under acknowledged paradigm shift in gangsta rap, in which rappers went from essentially actors, moving from character to character with each track, to performance artists who assumed an identity and stayed in character for the entirety of an album, or even a career.

It’s a testament to the magic created in that particular moment that despite going on to have one of rap’s most prolific careers, there is a prevailing feeling that Snoop’s subsequent output never quite lived up to expectations. In actuality, he has released an abundance of good material in the ensuing years, including several stellar albums. It simply speaks to the difficulty of following a project that shook the world. Especially when the aftershocks are still being felt today.

By the Numbers

Production: 10
Lyrics (how the words are put together): 9
Delivery & Flow: 9.5
Content (Substance): 7
Cohesiveness: 10
Consistency: 10
Originality: 9
Listenability: 10
Impact/Influence: 10
Longevity: 10

Total — 94.5

This score reflects the original 1993 pressing. On subsequent pressings, a track was removed (“Gz Up Hoes Down” ) due to sample clearance issues.

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Backspin is a look back at the albums that shaped and defined hip-hop. It explores what made them resonate, the impact they had on the culture, and where they fit in today’s ever-expanding hip-hop canon.

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Jeffrey Harvey

Politics * Music/Movies * 21st Century Culture.

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