Snoop Dogg: "Sensual Seduction"

Upon first listen what I noticed was the beat, scrolling through static and ads on some long car ride and stumbling upon waves of synths crashing and rolling down a beach of fresh (if obvious) drums. Just, fucking: hi-hat all over the place, bass drum, clap, add more bass drum, keep hi-hats on point, done. Good enough drums to buoy the midnight blue synth bloom and to make the beat actually “good”—for Akon, at least, which is who the vocodered crooner appears to be to the uninitiated listener. When the beat switched up and Snoop dropped a quick straight verse it became obvious who the culprit was for this dandy, this strange trifle, and the second time on aforementioned long car ride I heard the track I could hear Snoop’s voice clearly the whole time. Huh. So that’s what he’d sound like singing, kinda. It seemed then an appealingly sincere foray for an emcee in an artistic rut ever since the Neptunes stopped treating him as a muse and dropped him back in the quicksand of self-parody. This, anyway, was my opinion of “Sensual Seduction” when I had only heard the track in passing.

Now I have seen the video, and the track’s true nature is made clear. “Sensual Seduction” is a joke, and I am the punchline for having thought it anything more. Snoop appears here in mullet, in Jheri curl, with keytar and in outer space, a belittling parade of Will Ferrell-esque gags that have nothing to do with the music and everything to do with Snoop Doggy Dogg™, Joke (“Because Pimpin’ Ain’t Sleazy, For Shizzle!”). Before, when he sang on the radio, “All we ever do is play in the sheets,” it seemed a sort of coy playing-against-type, like alluvasudden Snoop doesn’t want to divulge the silky details; in the video he licks his lips on a heart-shaped bed while delivering this line, as if to say, “By which I mean I fuck this chick.” On the verge of making a surprisingly tight track here in his late-game, he self-consciously falls upon his old tricks, his old pimp’s cane. Snoop doesn’t deserve better, but that synth line did.