Snoop Dogg released Ten Til Midnight on April 10, a Death Row Records project packaged as both an album and a short film — the kind of multimedia bet that only an artist with Snoop's catalog can make plausibly. [1] Foo Fighters' Your Favorite Toy followed April 24, their twelfth studio album, recorded entirely at Dave Grohl's home. [2] The simultaneity was coincidental. The contrast was not.

Snoop's album arrives cleanly. The music is the story. Ten Til Midnight features a Sade collaboration, a movie tie-in, and the comfort of an artist who knows exactly who he is and has never been embarrassed by it. [1] It landed without controversy and will likely disappear from conversation within two weeks — which is how most Snoop albums work now. He is not making career-defining records. He is making Snoop Dogg records, which is its own genre.

Foo Fighters arrive burdened. In 2024, Grohl publicly acknowledged an extramarital affair and the birth of a child outside his marriage. He released a statement asking for privacy, which he received, in the sense that no tabloid has run anything further. What he did not receive was a reset. The MOJO interview — his first in-depth conversation in four years — is the album's actual release event. [2] The music will be received in that context. On X, the conversation has been almost exclusively about whether Grohl's explanation was sufficient, with the actual songs arriving as an afterthought. "Of All People," the single, is a genuinely good rock record. Whether that matters more or less than the interview is a question the charts will eventually answer.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles