Tha Eastsidaz: Snoop Dogg Presents Tha Eastsidaz G'd Up

After a solid, surprising comeback with 1999's No Limit Top Dogg, his best album since Doggystyle, Snoop Dogg returns to mediocrity with the debut album from Tha Eastsidaz, a new group consisting of himself, Tray Dee, and newcomer Goldie Loc. For the first release from his Dogg House label, Snoop has returned to basics, offering up a ridiculously overlong (70+ minutes), meat-and-potatoes slice of West Coast gangsta rap rooted firmly in P-Funk, gang violence, and the tag-team camaraderie that has typified his work since the beginning. Like many rappers, Snoop tends to be only as good as his producers, and while G'd Up benefits from the absence of No Limit's awful Beats By The Pound team, the production here (from Battlecat and Goldie Loc himself) is competent but undistinguished, more akin to Tha Doggfather than Doggystyle or The Chronic. Aggressively unambitious, G'd Up is a quintessential West Coast gangsta rap record, full of sing-song bravado, unimaginative aural violence, and full-tilt misogyny. Maybe it's asking too much of Snoop Dogg to rap about something other than the basics of macking hoes, stacking a grip, and representing. As it is, the only difference between G'd Up and the rest of Snoop's oeuvre is its explicit endorsement of the Crips, rather than a reliance on the usual vague gangland references. Goldie Loc and Tray Dee, meanwhile, sound frustratingly at home here, delivering ho-hum performances likely to earn each a comfortable, if undistinguished, career as a second-tier Snoop Dogg flunky.