Is there any route to dollars untried by formidable Death Row boss and frankly scary hip-hop mogul Suge Knight? Well no actually, and the reissue of the Row's '96 festive chancer proves that long after the talent and even ideas for commercial scams have run dry, Knight is still looking for gold.
Things weren't too good for Knight and Death Row even back then, this album was released after Dre quit the label and its sagging mid-nineties-R&B-by-numbers vibe is a dead giveaway for a label at sea without a creative captain.
Other than the amusement of soul interpretations of carols and Christmas staples including 'Silent Night' and 'Frosty The Snowman' - you know 'Music To Smoke An Ounce To After Your Turkey' - the majority of this is depressingly humourless. There are some great quotes, like the none-truer observation, "Christmas time is a time for chillin' ". But that's it.
What the album revealed in '96 and reinforces with its reissue this year is that Knight's business head isn't smart enough to realise that the punters can only be patronised for so long. No investment in talent, no long-term return. It's hard to conceive of Death Row as anything other than a spent force milking the last few drops so that it's investors can finish furnishing their Malibu retirement homes.
