Tha Blue Carpet Treatment

Background

The phrase Tha Blue Carpet Treatment is the album's title references for the red carpet, which were used at formal events. The blue color refers to Snoop Dogg's affiliation with the Crip gang, who often wears blue than red from their rival gang of the Bloods. The album cover was undergone some several revisions. In August 2006, the first concept was revealed on his website, featuring a cartoon dog (representing Snoop Dogg) displaying Crip gang signals while standing on a blue carpet patterned-like bandana. This design has been used, which would have been the third of Snoop Dogg's album covers to use the cartoon likeness of the rapper that was designed by his cousin Darryl Daniel. The updated version of his cover artwork was shown on the Late Show with David Lettermans 13th Anniversary Special on August 30, 2006, and it features a parody of the famous Hollywood Sign, which instead read "LONG BEACH". It has changed to its current version. Geffen posted this as the final cover for the album on their website.

On this album, Snoop Dogg's direction that want to take was him being the Long Beach, California native taking it back to his gangsta roots. The rapper told MTV.com about allowing him to embrace his true nature with this album; as he stated, "I went right back to the 'hood", he said of his album's production. "I took it back to the basics. I've been making a lot of pop songs, lot of R&B songs. Songs that may have made my fans feel like I wavered from what I was naturally accustomed to doing. But I'm an entertainer and I entertain people and that's what I was feeling at the time. But right now, I'm feeling like going right back to the 'hood". Pharrell said the rapper's music video, "Vato" will not only show his gangsta side, but will also tackle the issue of violence between African Americans and Hispanics at Los Angeles, California and call for racial unity. Snoop Dogg would teamed up with well-known DJs from the West, the East, and the South and released Tha Blue Carpet Treatment Mixtape, which was hosted by DJ Skee, DJ Whoo Kid and DJ Drama. It contained all the rumoured tracks that had been cut from the final track listing of his studio album. It was released a few weeks before the official album came out.

The track "Think About It" was composed by Frequency in his dorm room one and a half years prior to this album, while he was a student in Virginia. The material was passed to Mike Chavez of Geffen Records, who gave it to Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg uses the track to show his older son—who had not chosen him as the favorite hip-hop artist when being asked—that he can still be an old school gangster rapper regarding his style if he wants to. The track titled "Imagine" was slated to be featured on Busta Rhymes' album The Big Bang. Busta Rhymes stated in several interviews, before the release of The Big Bang, that the sample for "Imagine" was still trying to be cleared. Busta Rhymes stated that he was not sure that the sample would be cleared on time for his album's release, so it had to be excluded from his album. With the sample not being cleared at the time, and it is presumable that the song was given to Snoop Dogg for his album. It was recorded with verses by Kam and Snoop Dogg (in different from the album version) while playing during TBCT Listening party. Although Busta Rhymes released the remix to "Imagine", it is presumable that his "remix" when it was actually the intended original version which did not make it on the release of The Big Bang. Artists such as Nas, Ja Rule and Black-Ty each did their freestyles on this track.

Music

The track "Which One of You" was recorded during the album sessions at its process, with the group, called N.V. With the song was run by the production team 1500. The song "Round Here" contains the same sample on the song "Thank You" performed by Dido, in which became the same sample that it was used by a fellow American rapper Eminem for his track Stan. Therefore, Snoop Dogg was wasn't aware about this matter, when he was making that record, during its recording sessions. The song "L.A.X." contains a sample of "More Bounce to the Ounce" performed by Zapp, in which Snoop Dogg already have used this sample of a song once on one of his earlier track, titled "Snoop Bounce", which was featured from his album Tha Doggfather (1996). The songs "That's That Shit", "Boss' Life" and "Imagine" has lyrics ghostwritten from a former Aftermath Entertainment artists Stat Quo (Benton, S.) and The D.O.C. (Curry, T.).

Recording

Snoop Dogg told Billboard, that he was working on this album, Tha Blue Carpet Treatment, for nine months. He has collaborated with the likes of R. Kelly on the biggest song on the album, titled "That's That" produced by Nottz and other featured on the album Ice Cube, Pharrell, D'Angelo, Akon, Nate Dogg, B-Real (of Cypress Hill) and even Stevie Wonder. He also confirmed that Dr. Dre had a big input on this album, producing several tracks and even rapping a verse on the track, "Imagine". Dr. Dre hadn't produced any Snoop Dogg tracks since 2000. He also did I Wanna Fuck You with Akon but had to release a cleaned up version for radio play called I Wanna Love You.

Other songs recorded for this album didn't make the final cut, including "Wannabes" featuring Young Jeezy and Nate Dogg; produced by DJ Quik, "Smokin' Smokin' Weed" featuring Ray J, Slim Thug, Shorty Mack and Nate Dogg, and "Put This Thang on You" featuring Ne-Yo, only two of these ( except on You Put This Thang ) are released in disc two that is, in the disc of bonus tracks.

Critical reception

Tha Blue Carpet Treatment received generally positive reviews from music critics. The album maintained generally positive reviews with IGN calling it "one of Snoop's strongest efforts in a long time, with the beats, rhymes, and guests all complimenting the Doggfather with grand immediacy." It received a 4 out of 5 from Allhiphop.com, About.com and Allmusic. Ryan Dombal for Entertainment Weekly wrote that "Blue Carpet finds him refocused and reunited with Dr. Dre on four tracks. The two get nostalgic on standout 'Imagine'." - Grade: B+ Vibe magazine wrote that "Tha Blue Carpet Treatment stands as a strong statement from a veteran still pushing his artistic boundaries." Blender wrote that the album is "A throwback to his trunk-rattling G-funk heyday." - Grade: 3.5 out of five stars. XXL wrote that "Snoop's lyrical fire seems resurrected, as he delivers arguably his most consistently scorching work post-Doggystyle."

Christian Hoard for Rolling Stone wrote that Snoop's eighth LP doesn't do much to break the trend. The production is pretty hot, with high-def beats that range from tricked-out funk (Dr. Dre's "Boss's Life") to dark, tense bounce (the excellent Neptunes-produced "Vato"). The radio-friendly ups—the R. Kelly feature "That's That Shit"—balance out brawny head-nodders like "Gangbangin 101." Snoop sounds great dropping streams of consonants on "Think About It," and few rappers could make a minimalist "Drop It Like It's Hot"-style cut like "Candy (Drippin' Like Water)" sound so singular.

Nathan Rabin for The A.V. Club reviewed the album and wrote that "Snoop has always been able to knock out infectious radio singles, but his albums generally strand a few knockout songs amid oceans of lazy filler, opportunist trend-hopping, and derivative, second-rate G-funk. Sleepy, anticlimactic recent reunion albums from Dogg Pound and 213 (Snoop, Warren G, and Nate Dogg) failed to rouse Snoop out of his longstanding professional funk. So why does Snoop's shockingly good The Blue Carpet Treatment sound more like a loose, revitalized follow-up to Doggystyle? Dr. Dre's reappearance certainly doesn't hurt. Dre has always brought out the best in Snoop, and his presence seems to have reignited Snoop's passion and hunger. No track better exemplifies the disc's ethos of delirious excess than "Candy (Drippin' Like Water)", an insanely catchy candy-coated R&B song with clever nods to hyphy (E-40 and producer Rick Rock) and retro jazz-rap (check out that crazy Digable Planets sample!), plus guest raps from a small army of past-their-prime gangstas. When faced with a choice, Snoop here inevitably chooses all of the above. So Treatment gives listeners Dr. Dre and The Neptunes, The Game and Ice Cube, red-hot polygamy enthusiast Akon and old standby Nate Dogg, George Clinton and Stevie Wonder, gangsta shit, pimp shit, and at least one song encouraging pee-wee football players to go hard or go home. With his lush Blue Carpet Treatment, Snoop Dogg finally seems intent on building and expanding his musical legacy, rather than merely coasting on it.

Commercial performance

Tha Blue Carpet Treatment debuted at number 5 on the US Billboard 200, selling 264,000 copies in its first week. On the Nielsen SoundScan annual "Best Sellers Top 100" rankings, the album was listed 97th with the 2006 year-end catalog closing sales number of 637,000 copies despite having been released in mid-November and its sales data were accumulated for only one and a half months. As of June 2015, the album had sales 1,139,000 copies in the United States.

Track listing

Personnel

Credits adapted from Allmusic.