Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

 undertook a re-evaluation of Snoop Dogg’s work a year or so back when I got stuck on his track “Drop It” and never got unstuck. The guy isn't dumb, not by a long shot, and partial proof is SNOOP DOGG’S HOOD OF HORROR, a film project which is an homage to TALES FROM THE CRYPT with an urban setting. The potential among the African-American audience for horror films is untapped and, to be blunt, under-exploited. HOOD, from all accounts, should be an underground monster: grim, violent, graphic, and ---intentionally and otherwise --- funny.

The soundtrack to this bad boy is very well done. Snoop could have slopped together a bunch of tracks and made at least some people happy, but it’s obvious that some actual thought and care went into the selections here. There is, as might be reasonably expected, a crunk track or two (“Beaztly” by Flii Stylz), but other styles are well-represented, including r &b with a hip-hop tip (Al Kapone’s “My Dead Homie”), and some and a whole bunch of surprises. I mean, there’s grown folks’ music on here (“24-7-365” by Percy Sledge… “PERCY! M’MAN!”), a track from The North Mississippi All-Stars entitled “Goin’ Back To Dixie,” as topically out of place on this soundtrack as an explosive fart in the middle of a High Mass, and the similarly improbable electronic remix of the folk tune “Cotton Eye Joe” by Rednex. Never fear, however, there is plenty of straight up rap here, including “Shake That Sh**,” which features Dogg himself with Young Walt, Terrace Martin, and Tiffany Foxx, and Ill Bill‘s “Thousand To M‘s.” The least interesting track on the whole project, in fact, is Snoop’s own somewhat pedestrian but still competent “Welcome To The Hood,” which isn’t bad, but simply isn’t up to the rest of the project, though “Sod & Quon’s Theme (Dramacydal)” by Cool & Dre, featuring Aries Spears and Pooch Hall gives one pause on that score.

This is the first soundtrack in a bit that I've been able to sit through from beginning to end, repeatedly, without skipping tracks. It actually made me want to see the film, not that I'll need to be dragged. Gotta see where “Goin’ Back To Dixie” fits in…