Reincarnated, An Ode to Snoop Dogg’s Consumption of Weed

Snoop Dogg travels to Jamaica to make a reggae album and be baptized in Rastafarian culture in Reincarnated, but mainly, Andy Capper’s documentary is about celebrating the iconic rapper’s fondness for smoking, smoking, and then smoking some more pot. The herb is inhaled freely and frequently throughout this nonfiction account of Snoop’s efforts to let go of his gangsta-rap past and, as “Snoop Lion,” connect with peace, love, and “the struggle”—which he defines as the universal plight of disenfranchised inner city youths. The film is as lightweight as the ganja-puffing is plentiful, little more than a vanity project that allows its subject to wax philosophical on his past triumphs, tragedies, and spiritual development (aided by Louis Farrakhan) from gangland pimp to nonviolent family man. Determined to prove that his shift to reggae isn’t just a “gimmick,” Snoop meets and collaborates with local legends like Bunny Wailer. Yet despite his sincere desire to turn over a new, positive leaf, his trips to mountainside pot plantations and through Bob Marley’s old Trench Town stomping ground still make him come off as a tourist. Regardless, he’s an engaging and amusing tour guide, never more so than when he slyly opines that, at 40, he’s now “bud-wiser.”