“You can’t say, ‘I fuck with the gospel album,’ come on, my nigga,” Snoop Dogg tells me, moments after I give him props for the gospel LP Death Row Records dropped last month. I did, indeed, fuck with the album, Altar Call, but, amid laughter, and in the face of Snoop’s preternatural comedic timing, I realize he’s right and promptly correct myself: “I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
It’s a mostly funny screw-up on my part — but if I’m being fair to myself, you can’t blame me; I’d just finished listening to tracks from Iz It a Crime?, a new Snoop album that’s decidedly very un-gospel. Sipping a lovely Snoop 19 Crimes tequila pineapple in a swanky midtown Manhattan lounge Tuesday night, I absorbed Snoop’s latest — a project that’s equal parts celebratory and vindictive. “This is something that’s been in my heart for the past eight months,” he told a listening session audience that included Busta Rhymes, Benny The Butcher, Statik Selektah and a few incredibly distinguished and nearly as cool journalists like myself. “This shit is called Iz It a Crime? because I feel like when we get to a certain point in this career that we call music, we get judged for everything. Whether it’s good or bad. And I just wanna ask a question: Is it a crime? The shit that I do?”
After tasting some of his son Cordell’s delicious apple pie Dr. Bombay Ice Cream and regrettably forgetting to try out Dr. Dre and Snoop’s Gin & Juice brand, I began listening to Snoop try to answer the question he just asked. Here, Snoop makes time to address his President Trump inauguration performance, raps with Sexyy Red, and takes some shots at Suge Knight on “Shut Yo Bitchass Up”: “I can see why you mad, I bought everything you own / Now you in PC snitching on the phone.”
The music served as the soundtrack for an accompanying film that could’ve been called, Snoop Dogg is a Rap Legend, and Besides That, Just a Really Cool Nigga. The endless clips of people giving him props juxtaposed with music videos and reflections on his own family manage to feel self-mythological, yet intermittently, genuinely humble. A cynical person — someone not like me, at all — might say it was just some self-indulgent album promo. But, to be fair, Snoop’s charisma is such that it would be super entertaining anyway. And then also, there’s the fact that Snoop’s generally been pretty open even at his lowest moments; whatever this movie is called feels like the best-case scenario sequel to Murder Was the Case.
The music itself is pretty good, and I’m not just saying that because I’m tipsy and a little engulfed by the presence of the guy that made “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” did cooking shows with Martha Stewart and created his own suffix (let he who hasn’t needlessly added “izzle” to a random word cast the first stone). The Sexyy Red collab is fun, and the Denaun-assisted “Cold Summer” is a track that’s simultaneously macabre, hilarious and groovy. At press time, I’m listening to the whole album and it still sounds cool, even after the tequila’s long-since worn off. But during the actual event, the deftly mixed drink, and perhaps some of Uncle Snoop’s weed smoke, inspires me to live out the Hit the Blunt Meme (in other words, more properly do my job) by diving into an existential question: How is Snoop adjusting to the new frontier of technology and entertainment? He’s been at the center of it for a long time now.
Thirteen years ago — long before AI fully sprang forth to threaten my job and just about everything else I hold dear (re: my job) — Snoop and Dr. Dre took the stage to perform with an AI-adjacent 2Pac at the 2012 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. The moment was pretty neat at the time, but I remember being a little, “ehh” about the moral logistics of it all. The idea surfaced again when Drake included an AI Pac and AI Snoop verse to his Kendrick Lamar diss track, “Taylor Made.” Snoop himself acknowledged the song playfully, for which Kendrick called him out on his GNX track, “Wacced Out Murals.” Snoop took Kendrick’s point in stride and apologized.
But all this made me get to thinking: Snoop didn’t outwardly say anything bad about people using AI, and he himself was at the center of a Pac-related landmark moment for AI technology. So then, would he ever be open to doing a collaboration with an AI version of Makaveli the Don? In short, no.
“I don’t know about an AI song with 2Pac, because to me, it ain’t real when I got real records with him,” Snoop told Okayplayer. “When we made records, we sat next to each other. We didn’t battle each other, but we was on each other’s head like, ‘Say some dope shit,’ and then go in the booth, and he’s in there cheering me on, and I’m cheering him on.’ AI can’t give you that shit,” Snoop added. “That nigga’s a robot.”
So, while Snoop stops short of saying it would be a crime, don’t count on a Snoop and AI Pac single for a while — or, ever. If you want to check out actual Pac and Snoop tracks, just check out “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted,” “Wanted Dead or Alive,” or the officially unreleased, but still out there cut, “Street Life.” If you want to check out Iz It a Crime?, check it out on DSPs. If I get the chance, I’ll tell Snoop I fuck with it. Hopefully he won’t mind.
