Artist: Snoop Dogg
Title: Paid Tha Cost To Be Da Bo$$
Label: Doggystyle
Year: 2002
Rating: 4 of 5
Review by: Dead Eye - deadend_rec@hotmail.com

Bigg Snoop Dogg is back! Back with a vengeance to! He knows his status in the game now! First of a short intro called "Don Doggy" which leads us to the real intro called "Da Boss Would Like To See You". A groovy west coast funk beat by E-Swift with Snoop talking over it.

Now to the first song "Stoplight" which got that real up to date Snoop sound, if you been checking out his new sound that started to shape form on Tha Last Meal and really was a new sound on the latest Doggystyle compilation. If you like the new sound or not I don´t know, you´ll be the judge. Following that is the Neptunes-produced, Pharrell assisted lead single "From Tha Chuuuch To Da Palace", which is all right! It gives you a great hint of what Snoop brings on the new album.

"I Belive In You" features Doggystyle lovely singing first lady LaToiya Williams. This is a real soul full song where Snoop shows a softer side not shown too often. Probably he wrote these rhymes with his wife Shanté Broadus in mind. Ms. Williams gets a lot of room to show her skills here, a great move. Snoop don´t just use her for the chorus, she has her own verses as well! A real rap/R n B duet as it should be done!
Peep track 6 called "Lollipop" with Just Blaze on the beat. And Jay-Z, Soopafly and Nate Dogg sharing the mic with Calvin. This is one of the best Snoop tracks to date, everybody shines together, and nobody out shines anybody else. All of them delivers top notch rhymes! This is a look at what sound we´ll hear in 2003 and beyond, wanna hear the future now? Well listen to this one!

There´s only one thing that might make you forget how great Loolipop is and that is that it´s followed by one of the three best Snoop songs ever. "Ballin" brings it back to the 70´s with The Dramatics. It don´t get more playalistic then this! How can I describe this one, nice harmonizing singing, piano playing and horns softly in the background. Battlecat showed with this masterpiece that he his one of the most underrated beat makers in this game still!

"Beautiful" is a cool track with Pharrell once again singing and producing. Also on the track is Charlie Wilson. Me, I´m a great fan of Charlie´s. He have been doing his thing for so damn long, it´s great to see Snoop still pushing him on great songs like this!
"Paper´d Up" samples that old song "Don´t Look Any Further" and also a small element of "Paid In Full". Fredwreck did the beat and I actually hold him as a top 5 producer in this game, listen to his work on previous albums from various artists, you can´t go wrong with a Fredwreck beat! Mr. Kane did his part on here as well. He ain´t featured as much on this album as on the last but maybe that´s good, we know what Kane is about now a smaller dose of him is okay for me!

"Wasn´t Your Fault" is the first track that´s only okay, I don´t feel it too much, okay like I said but not a classic, it´s on a often used subject "can´t control these hoes", feels a lil old maybe! "Boss Playa" got a cool beat, why? Well Fredwreck did it so what else could you expect? "Hourglass" is for the club - not a great one, wouldn´t have missed it if they left it in the lab…

"The One And Only" brings a whole other sound then previously tracks, DJ Premier brought the beat to the table which of course brings a heavy Hip Hop element to it, Snoop goes N.Y. on this one! "I Miss That Bitch" got Hi-Tek doing the beat, I can´t say it´s east, west or anything else, it´s universal and really cool. E-White raps on this one. Makes me really look forward to his solo effort! He won´t go multi platinum but he stay real representing his hood and click - now that´s a dying bread of emmcee´s!

"From Long Beach To Brick City" features Warren G, Redman and Nate Dogg plus Fredwreck on the beat! Warren G only does some small talk, no real verse - too damn bad! But on the other hand Redman delivers his best verse since I don´t know when! Really great! Nate is on point and Snoop is Snoop. Without a shadow of a doubt one of the best songs on the album!

"Suited N Booted" is kind of odd, pimpish in a way, not a really great song! And if you wanna talk about odd peep "You Got What I Want" with Ludacris, Goldie Loc and Charlie Wilson! This beat is so out of this world, it reminds me of some that Detroit rapper Esham would rap to in 96-98. It´s strange but cool as hell. Ludacris does a great job here, but the others to! "Batman & Robin" is also produced by DJ Premier and features Rage and RBX two Death Row survivors that still is on top of their game, maybe better then ever. What the game really need in my eyes is another Rage CD, tired of all "sex sell my cds" female rappers like I am? Well Rage need to bring the raw rhymes like only she can. The game also needs a good RBX CD with the right back up! From Doggystyle Records, he has released 2 CDs with no great line up of producers so give him his chance he is one hell of a rapper!

"A Message 2 Fat Cuzz" - a skit dedicated to Suge and Death Row is second last followed by the earlier bootlegged song "Pimp Slapp´D" dedicated to the same! Okay this album which is Snoop´s 6th official album is really good! However I was so blown away by both "Top Dogg" and "Last Meal" when they released my expectations was so high this time around they were hard to match. It´s a lil different sound picture that might take a while to get used to however it´s a great album. And with songs like Ballin and Lollipop Snoop will stay on top for a long time to come!