Snoop's departure from Death Row, his early No Limit era and No Limit Top Dogg

[sweetdudejim]

So in the aftermath of the release of Missionary I'd been going thru some of the older Snoop records that I'd written off a long time ago. One of them being his third album, his No Limit debut, Da Game Is To Be Sold, Not To Be Told, And honestly, it still sounds as bad, if not worse than it did in 1998. I didn't know a thing about music production in 1998, but I knew that No Limit Records and Snoop's first album with them just sounded cheap. Kinda like their album covers and packaging.

But anyways, he put out this No Limit garbage in I think August '98, and then had No Limit Top Dogg in May '99. So my question is, was the quick release of Top Dogg a reaction to the fact that Da Game Is To Be Sold was pretty much universally panned? It sold well, but I remember it really kinda hurting his rep.

Now in retrospect, the '98 album looks more like a diversion and a favor to Master P for getting him off Death Row, with No Limit Top Dogg being the "real" follow up to Tha Doggfather, complete with productions from people like Dr. Dre and DJ Quik and features from Xzibit, Warren G and Nate Dogg, not to mention songs he had been working on when he was with Death Row, like "Doin' Too Much" and "Buss'n Rocks" (which was known "Hitt Roccs" with DR).

As far as Da Game Is To Be Sold, Not To Be Told, there were a few good cuts. "Show Me Love" (produced by DJ Pooh) and "Still a G Thang" are still really nice West Coast records. "Picture This" actually coulda been great with actual good production, but alas that was not No Limit's forte. "Hoes, Money & Clout" is kinda good, but it still pales against pretty much everything Snoop had done before. And despite Soopafly being a pretty great producer, the song kinda came off as cheap sounding, which the rest of the album did as well except for "Show Me Love" and "Still a G Thang."

But anyways, it got me wondering. So....Snoop decided to leave Death Row Records in, what? Summer or fall of '97 or so? And after he decided that he was recording new music on his own, right? We know for a fact "Don't Do the Crime" comes from that era. We know he did "Zoom" with Dr. Dre. Perhaps "Last Meal" (from Smokefest World Tour and "Ride On/Caught Up!" could be from this era? I don't know. I'd also kind of assume "Show Me Love" comes from this era as well, cuz I mean, it seems really odd that this one DJ Pooh production shows up in the middle of a bunch of mostly Beats by the Pound garbage.

Ultimately, none of this matters now as Snoop now has a discography littered with crap (he does not need to have released TWENTY solo albums). But releasing such a cookie-cutter No Limit album in the '90s when albums had longer shelf lives and sales mattered, he really got lucky that it didn't tank his career.

[abusive]

A few points here from my knowledge of NL.

P worked fast. He didn't even write, he just freestyled all of his own verses. Beat By The Pound didn't mix most of their music due to P's time restraints. They also had to make music for the entire team and keep up with production. Thats why the music wasn't as great as it could have been. Mystikal was forced to rush his second album as well nut it came out pretty good.

 I do feel that Snoop probably was rushed into doing his first NL album just so P could show the world he was on NL.

Didn't Dre and Snoop have some issues around this time? That would explain why he wasn't active on Snoop's first NL album.

From what I remember his first album did well. I think the west didn't like it but the south did. So no, I think they just worked fast and it had nothing to do with trying to make up for his previous work. You have to remember that his prior DR album wasn't well received either. Down south more people would rather hear his NL stuff over his second DR album.

[soopa-man]

No Limit Top Dogg is the real return of Snoop Dogg on a lot of levels he started with a heavily list of Guest Appearances from 2001, Marshall Mathers, The Dynasty, Funk Flex album The Tunnel… after Top Dogg the first Tha Eastsidaz album blew up and then Tha Last Meal and the Up in Smoke Tour.. he truly has resurrected he career and in better form

But I will say Da Game Is To Be Sold after Tha Doggfather album slip didn’t help him much … Snoop took huge chances of change when the fans wanted some simplicity at times and it back fired

His Da Game album is sprinkled with some dope shit and now I think it’s better than before with Mystikal going crazy on Ain’t Nothing Personal and C-Murder on DP Gangsta and then both rhyming over a door ass Meech swells beat on See Ya When I get There… it should have been a dope blend of Westcoast and South beats but it was more a Master P & Snoop Dogg album truthfully … you look at it like that and hear it that way it ain’t too crazy to say this shit gooo…

Hooked from the soundtrack should have been on the album and Don’t Be Foolish as well two track that embodies what the album needed to sound like as well… Snitches off Last Don was Snoop on fire as well.. I think they rushed projects and a lot was sprinkled every where at times … but Snoop definitely showed he was capable of making a dope album with Top Dogg, Eastsidaz and Tha Last Meal by having Dre and Quik especially come back to Cali G Funk with him

[sweetdudejim]

No Limit Top Dogg is the real return of Snoop Dogg on a lot of levels he started with a heavily list of Guest Appearances from 2001, Marshall Mathers, The Dynasty, Funk Flex album The Tunnel… after Top Dogg the first Tha Eastsidaz album blew up and then Tha Last Meal and the Up in Smoke Tour.. he truly has resurrected he career and in better form

But I will say Da Game Is To Be Sold after Tha Doggfather album slip didn’t help him much … Snoop took huge chances of change when the fans wanted some simplicity at times and it back fired

His Da Game album is sprinkled with some dope shit and now I think it’s better than before with Mystikal going crazy on Ain’t Nothing Personal and C-Murder on DP Gangsta and then both rhyming over a door ass Meech swells beat on See Ya When I get There… it should have been a dope blend of Westcoast and South beats but it was more a Master P & Snoop Dogg album truthfully … you look at it like that and hear it that way it ain’t too crazy to say this shit gooo…

Hooked from the soundtrack should have been on the album and Don’t Be Foolish as well two track that embodies what the album needed to sound like as well… Snitches off Last Don was Snoop on fire as well.. I think they rushed projects and a lot was sprinkled every where at times … but Snoop definitely showed he was capable of making a dope album with Top Dogg, Eastsidaz and Tha Last Meal by having Dre and Quik especially come back to Cali G Funk with him

Yeah I guess what I was trying to say is something you put a bit better in the beginning of your post.

Da Game Is To Be Sold was kind of a diversion, a payment to Master P. And though I think you like this album more than I do, the facts are that the song most remember from this album is the first single, "Still a G Thang", which in my opinion is a classic Snoop West Coast track. Obviously nowhere near his best with Dr. Dre, but definitely a highlight of his No Limit era.

Also, I don't think I ever heard that "Don't Be Foolish" song until you mentioned. Crazy that something like that never caught my ear all these years. I must've been patiently awaiting No Limit Top Dogg at the time that came out, but for whatever reason I never heard it.

But point is, I def agree with you that "Hooked" and "Don't Be Foolish" should've been on Da Game Is To Be Sold. I think the b-sides from the album should've made it as well, "Full-Fledged Pimpin'" (from the "Still a G Thang" single) and "It's All on a Ho" (from the "Woof" single). Neither were anywhere near Snoop's best, but ultimately better songs that the seemingly endless procession of annoying, cheap, rushed Beats by the Pound productions on the album.

I remember in the book of the album, it had the ad for what was at the time being called Top Dogg, and while my teenaged hopes were that this was the album were that he'd hook back up with Nate Dogg and Warren G and Tha Dogg Pound, and most importantly and excitingly, Dr. Dre. But the Pen & Pixel album art and general walled-off nature of hip-hop made me figure it wasn't happened. And by "walled-off culture" I just meant that you didn't see a lot mingling between crews, not as much as you see today. You wouldn't expect, say...Snoop Dogg on an OutKast album, or The Lox on a Kurupt album. It just wasn't done all that much.

But yeah, around the time of the release of No Limit Top Dogg Snoop seemed more than happy to prove his West Coast bonafides. Having three great new Dre tracks on the album showed he was serious and was almost kinda the appetizer for the entree that was 2001. And following up with the album from Tha Eastsidaz (which was a sizable hit on its own) and then his continued work with Dr. Dre on Tha Last Meal, Snoop was going from strength to strength. And lest we forget, he had also been doing tons of guest features with artists all over the map, which set the stage to find hits hroughout the first decade of the 2000s.

[gfunk2024]

In case you don't know, at the time that snoop was looking to get away from DR and sign w/ a new label, he had an offer from Mack 10 to drop an album on Hoo-Bangin records. Mack 10 was very popular at the time.

Imagine how different things would be if snoop had taken that deal instead. From what I heard, that was a 1 album deal, where-as No Limit was a 3 album deal.

I think Hoo-Bangin had a straight bangin lineup at the time, and snoop could have made a classic. We will never know though.