"Ego Trippin'" by Snoop Dogg; Doggy Style/Geffen

More than 16 years into his career, Snoop clearly isn't interested in sensitivity training. What makes his latest effort at once fascinating and disturbing is his apparent inability to connect the dots between his personal struggles and the gangsta ethics he champions so artfully.

Musically, "Trippin' " ranks with the rapper's best work; he and his co-producers fold '80s electro-funk into arrangements that feel at once nostalgic and bracingly fresh, from the shimmering single "Sexual Seduction" to the Princely "Cool." Snoop's distinctly mellow rhyming shines brightest when he's in a playful mood, as on the twangy "My Medicine" or "Deez Hollywood Nights."

But the references to bad girls and fun drugs grow less amusing when considered alongside material that either is more soberly misogynistic or tries to trumpet family values. On "Why Did You Leave Me," he asks why a true love "had to go away." Well, duh.