Country: U.S.A.
Genre: Hip-Hop
Style: Gangsta Rap
Label Number: P2 50000
.FLAC via Florenfile
.AAC 256 kbps via Florenfile
© 1998 No Limit/Priority Records
AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
As the Death Row ship was sinking, Snoop Dogg bailed, heading over to the new bastion of street cred, No Limit Records. Master P
had worked his way to the top of the charts by giving the people what
they wanted -- straight-up gangsta, with no frills, creativity, or
substance. It was all a little rawer (actually, just cheaper) than Death
Row's productions, but there was no denying that they knew what sold,
and it seemed as if Snoop was making No Limit legitimate in the eyes of the mainstream world. Master P
is a master marketer, and he knows how to reshape everyone on his
roster into good No Limit soldiers. And that's precisely what Snoop Dogg
is on Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told, his third album proper and
first for No Limit. There are a few concessions to G-funk scattered
throughout the record, but by and large, Beats by the Pound and P give Snoop
a set of standard No Limit backing tracks and have him do the No Limit
dance -- record a long-winded, monotonous album, filled with
"interpolations" of '80s soul and rap songs, and loaded with No Limit
cameos. But there's one crucial difference: unlike most of Master P's grunts, Snoop
has style, miles and miles of style. His loose, languid delivery is
positively enthralling, which makes it all the more frustrating when No
Limit hacks interrupt the flow. That happens on almost all of the tracks
-- only a handful are Snoop
alone, and those illustrate that he can, on occasion, turn bland music
into something interesting. Still, they can't excuse the banality of Da
Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told. Signing to No Limit might have
preserved Snoop Dogg's street cred, but it ruined his creativity.
* Due to past abuse, comments for the Hip-Hop section have been disabled.
- Use this page to report a broken link in this post -
tags: snoop dogg, da game is to be sold not told, the, 1998, flac,
