T in the Park review: Snoop Dogg, Main Stage

It doesn’t take much thought to decipher Snoop Dogg’s message: his guiding tenets involve ladies, drink and weed. And it’s a message that finds a receptive audience among a boisterous Saturday night crowd at T in the Park’s Main Stage.

Snoop on the Main Stage. Picture: Ian Georgeson

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While he might have been rechristened Snoop Lion recently by a Rastafarian priest (if you believe the PR story), this is, to all intents and purposes, the Snoop Dogg we know as the sleazy Godfather of West Coast rap, the one artist whose fame or credibility never seems to wane, despite living in a cloud of smoke and several other distractions.

His entourage precede him on stage, dropping excerpts of ‘California Love’ and ‘Still D.R.E.’ before the D-O-double-G himself arrives to lap up the acclaim.

It wouldn’t be a hip-hop show without sky-high levels of ego, and so opening track, ‘Here Comes the King’, is perfectly apt. It’s the second single from his new reggae-based album Reincarnated, but it soon becomes clear that Snoop knows what his people want, reeling through hits like ‘P.I.M.P’, ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ and ‘Nuthin’ But A G Thang’.

Even if the audience respond with their hands in the air, it still feels like a tired and predictable show, and lamentable moments like the airing of his collaboration with Akon, or the man on stage in a dog costume carrying a giant fake spliff, only reinforce this impression.

Before leaving with his MCs, DJ and scantily clad dancers in tow, Snoop leads the Balado crowd in a mawkish, sentimental singalong, and then Bob Marley’s ‘Jammin’ plays them out. It’s undoubtedly the finest musical moment in the show, and it doesn’t involve Snoop Dogg at all.

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