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Missionary Is a Museum Exhibit
Dr. Dre and Snoop make an edgeless return to their old stomping grounds.
Dr. Dre, one of few people Snoop would admit he agonizes to impress, drives a hard bargain and pushes his charges to greater heights, historically existing as much in the Tom Wilson category of producers who work the room as in the Marley Marl lineage of sample wizardry and the Quincy Jones tradition of studio albums as talent showcases. Missionary ’stitle implies a return to the ominous, ornate G-funk Dre used on Snoop’s first album, but the doc who showed is the one whose music thrives on workout playlists, who made the simultaneously lush and spacious beats on The Marshall Mathers LP, Get Rich or Die Tryin’,and The Documentary. So Missionary applies his tendencies toward intricate tunefulness to a wide-ranging set of sounds whose median is fleet, percussive tracks like “Outta Da Blue,” a mountain of clattering drum hits nodding to Busta Rhymes’s “Dangerous,” Schoolly D’s “Saturday Night,” and M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” all at once.
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