Tidal Catalog #13: Snoop Dogg (Update #1)

I Wanna Thank Me (7)

Snoop’s latest album, I Wanna Thank Me, was released on 8/16/19 which was led into by much hype that he was going back to his West Coast G-funk roots. I’ve read many reviews about the album and most of them state that same thing – this is a return to his earliest albums. If that’s the case, then people didn’t listen more than 20 minutes.

The title of the new record plays off his Hollywood Walk of Fame speech when he received a star on it last year. With it, he both playfully and seriously thanked himself for working tirelessly to get where he is today. And with that, comes an album that really sounds like a retrospective of almost his entire career, albeit with new recordings.

Yes, the album starts off with some vintage Snoop g-funk with a newer twist. Songs like “What U Talkin’ Bout” is one to bounce to next to “Gin and Juice” while the west coast ballad, “Let Bygones Be Bygones” about his relationship with Suge Knight reminisces back to those earliest days of success. And “I C Your Bullshit” with its sample of Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” sounds like something that could have come off the second NWA record.

As the disc progresses through a whopping 21 songs, the vibe changes though. “Turn Me On” is bouncier like the earliest Pharrell collaborations while “Wintertime in June” would have a been a nice slower tune of the Pharrell backed Bush album.

There’s also “Little Square UBitchU” which wouldn’t have been totally out of place on his Snoop Lion reggae album. But you can also look to two song that could span really any part of the last two decades of Snoop Music, the trippy weed tune, “Take Me Away” and the upbeat “Do It When I’m In It” which is a collaboration with Jermaine Dupri. Or you can listen to “Do You Like I Do” which is a new jack swing tune, something Snoop has never done before.

The album is all over the map, some tracks great, some tracks average and about half way through it seems like all focus is lost as the record just jumps from style to style really with no rhyme or reason. So with that, I can’t call it a return to g-funk as a whole. Sure, there are a few tunes that definitely are but overall it seems like more of a project to show all of us why Snoop has thanked himself so much over the decades.