{"id":853479,"date":"2026-08-13T06:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853479\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T06:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:44:12","slug":"kurupt-dj-battlecat-tales-from-my-hood-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853479\/","title":{"rendered":"Kurupt \/ DJ Battlecat: Tales From My Hood Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

It makes sense why Snoop Dogg<\/a> would buy the Death Row trademark. After founder Suge Knight filed for bankruptcy in 2006, it was passed like a hot potato among holding companies and distressed-asset managers. Snoop acquired the brand and his own back catalog in a 2022 deal<\/a>, treating them as low-overhead intellectual property\u2014which may explain the abundance of screen-printed Death Row gear at your nearest Burlington Coat Factory.<\/p>\n

Snoop didn\u2019t manage to get his hands on The Chronic<\/a> or 2Pac<\/a>\u2019s masters, so he\u2019s mostly building a streaming catalog from scratch. These latter-day Death Row records hew to a formula. Snoop clears a few blockbuster samples\u2014Sly Stone<\/a>, the Police<\/a>, Tom Petty<\/a>, whatever\u2014enlists Jane Handcock and October London for cut-rate R&B hooks, and keeps his fingers crossed. The proof-of-concept was 2017\u2019s overachieving Neva Left<\/a>, which found Snoop freestyling<\/a> over<\/a> the \u201cC.R.E.A.M.\u201d and \u201cCheck the Rhime\u201d instrumentals (turns out autopilot Snoop is still pretty good!), but it\u2019s been diminishing returns ever since, bizarre<\/a> jumbles<\/a> gaming one algorithm or another.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Tales From My Hood\u2019s quirks can be chalked up to Snoop\u2019s erratic business sense. (Why is it named after a mid-\u201990s B-movie<\/a> that disappeared from cable ages ago? Why do these albums always<\/a> have<\/a> pictures of the artists from 30 years ago?) A full-length from Dogg Pound rapper Kurupt<\/a> and L.A.\u2019s DJ Battlecat bears all the hallmarks of Death Row\u2019s zombie era: random medleys, unimaginative samples, features for unknown labelmates, seemingly AI-generated album art. A song like \u201cMindstate\u201d captures all the highs and lows. Indie darling Ill Camille kicks off with a spoken-word intro; BJ the Chicago Kid<\/a> pipes in with elegant, multi-tracked harmonies over a tastefully spare percussion track. Kurupt flashes an off-kilter flow and five-dollar adjectives, giving way to a 90-second guitar coda. There\u2019s plenty to like about the roster and the blues-club intimacy, but in lieu of trajectory and transitions, it\u2019s a total hodgepodge.<\/p>\n

The soul and funk interpolations scattered throughout Tales From My Hood are similarly hit-or-miss. The nadir is \u201cI Don\u2019t Luv Her,\u201d an obvious New Edition<\/a> flip with verses from Dogg Pound sideman Soopafly and Mississippi rapper Akeem Ali, sandwiched between another BJ hook; it beggars belief that these guys ever shared a room. On the plus side, there\u2019s \u201cMe N the Boyz,\u201d which barely strays from its Mothership Connection<\/a> source material. It\u2019s a can\u2019t-miss sample\u2014Battlecat layers fresh drums and horns, ceding the stage for one of Kurupt\u2019s brightest performances in years. He\u2019s buoyed by pure instinct, recapturing the charismatic warmth of \u201cWelcome Home<\/a>\u201d and \u201cWhere I Wanna Be<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tales From My Hood coheres around P-Funk homage, both in Snoop\u2019s Bootsy Collins<\/a> impression on \u201cSneak Attacc\u201d and the \u201c(Not Just) Knee Deep<\/a>\u201d horns on \u201cWat U Do to Me.\u201d Although smoked-out vibrance is Dogg Pound\u2019s stock-in-trade, it\u2019s hard to tell if Tales From My Hood was conceived as a full-throated tribute, or if they couldn\u2019t think of anything else. (They could at least have dialed Kokane or Suga Free for fresh interpretations; Collins and Mr. Clinton<\/a> are themselves still<\/a> performing<\/a>, and have<\/a> appeared<\/a> on<\/a> past Dogg Pound outings.) The same samples have been reheated over and over since The Chronic, and these renditions might\u2019ve turned up on any Dogg Pound project in the last quarter-century. Then again, that\u2019s more or less the point\u2014it\u2019s all grist for Death Row\u2019s licensing mill. If Snoop\u2019s got work for his old pals, that\u2019s just as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It makes sense why Snoop Dogg would buy the Death Row trademark. After founder Suge Knight filed for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[12327,64,63,134,136,1672],"class_list":["post-853479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}