Smoke something, nephew…

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[4.70]

Brad Shoup: Look, Snoop’s a living ledger, so anything he masterminds — even an entry into the semiotic minefield of roots reggae — is going to have his touch. Major Lazer whipped up a decent approximation of the stank… I don’t see instrument one in the trailer (although VICE did a great job of catching smoke), but whatever. The sound I’m familiar with is too hermetic for female BGVs, but he’s coming from American pop. He’s OK with the patois but his melody has none of that fearless flatness. Without his regular cadence as crutch, Snoop shrinks under his backing singer, the sonorous organ, and that stupid repeating boing. You can practically hear the concentration. He’s too concerned with staying on-key to really let loose, and at this stage in the game no one’s ever going to confuse him with a withdrawn mystic. I’m pleased that he’s challenging himself, and I’m keen to hear his anti-gun song, but thus far I’m afraid his crew has more compromise than confluence in ’em.
[5]

Erick Bieritz: Snoop Whomever is better suited to something that crisply counterpoints his famously languid flow, not indulges it. I’m not asking him to endlessly chase the ghost of “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” but I also am sort of asking him to do that. But there’s a larger question here, and it is what do rappers do when they get old? Rap’s second generation were not one-hit wonders and they have “careers” and “legacies,” and Snoop’s fitful experiments with different genres and cameos with other artists traces a fascinating course across the map of rap’s middle age.
[4]

Mallory O’Donnell: You don’t often see this kind of maximalism in mainstream reggae tracks. Of course this is no ordinary mainstream reggae track… but who it’s by aside, this carries a roots feel, not a dancehall one, which is a welcome trend for crossover. And there’s a lot going on: several layers of percussion, great retro organ, the usual skank kind of extra-smoked out, Snoop doing his standard cadence-shifting act, an even the odd G-funk sound effect/shout out. Surprisingly true to the funk, I find this.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: The remarkable thing about Snoop’s career over the past decade and a half has been his ability to release an unexpectedly solid run of singles despite seeming to phone it in on every single album. (Really, you mightn’t be checking for any LP he’s released in a year beginning with two, but you sure should still be spinning “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” “Beautiful,” and “I Wanna Rock.” “La La La” is so OK that it doesn’t deserve to be ejected from that claque, but only because it shows Snoop can reproduce a serviceable reggae sound. It’s properly woozy — more Lee Perry than Legend — but, as a genre exercise, it’s far less essential than “My Medicine.” 
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: This is a completely inoffensive — but also uninteresting — reggae song getting more attention because Calvin Broadus, Jr. went to Jamaica and made a documentary or something.  Ignoring the name attached to this, this is nice background music for a beach side head shop.
[4]

Colin Small: While yes, the name change is silly, and yes, its a little sad that the forty-year-old Snoop’s reasoning behind the genre shift is that he wants “to feel young again”, I’m not surprised or annoyed. Snoop has been making music like a machine since the early ’90s. He’s a music lover at heart and I don’t begrudge an urge to explore new ground. That doesn’t, however, make “La La La” a hit. Its not a terrible song, but most of the credit goes to Major Lazer’s swamp of a beat. Snoop’s rasta voice is unfortunately a touch too parodic for this song to be anything more than a weird gimmick. Not that that’s stopped him in the past.
[4]

Josh Langhoff: Every time he sings “dem” with the polite fervor of a convert, I cringe. I’ve led Scandinavian Lutherans in singing “By the Waters of Babylon”, and they were not high, and they sounded more at ease.
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Jonathan Bogart: For a little while now I’ve harbored a secret conviction that Snoop Dogg and Chuck Berry are the same person in different timelines; on that reading, this is his “Havana Moon.”
[6]

Will Adams: Talking about pastiche and whether it’s genuine is about as much fun as having to constantly remind everyone you meet that you go by “Lion” now, not “Dogg.” I’m more interested in Major Lazer’s murky wash of dub, the melody that I’m going to be la-ing for the next two weeks, and whether that female backing vocal is actually Robyn.
[6]

Anthony Easton: I would think that the drawl that marks the best of Snoop Dogg’s hip hop would work well in reggae. Whether this spiritual awakening is genuine or not, the drawl isn’t really there, so it becomes a failure of aesthetics (but not marketing). 
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