Dogg Chit

After taking a four-year break before their last album, 2006's Cali Iz Active, Tha Dogg Pound are making up for lost time by not even letting a year pass before releasing Dogg Chit. One can wonder if it had anything to do with Active's low sales, since nobody seemed to want Tha Pound lifted out of the ghetto and onto the charts. If the artwork's reference to their debut didn't clue you in, Dogg Chit is a return to the bleak and brutal world they explored back in 1995. It's all convincing, going against any thought the return to form is contrived and forced, and beats are so G-funk it's only when the Game shows up that the album feels post-2000. Paternity tests come under fire on the amusing "Dat Ain't My Baby," and "Vibe" forgets about carrying heat for a change, but the rest of the album is pure thugging and won't recruit any new fans. Course, when they partied it up less than a year before, nobody noticed, so this traditional, almost entirely Daz-produced effort is no big surprise. That it's so good after such little time passed is a surprise, and entirely welcome one. [Dogg Chit was also made available in a clean version, with all explicit material removed.]