The highlight of this year's Paris Olympics was a 53-year-old rapper from Long Beach.
Snoop Dogg, who worked as an NBC commentator, carried the Olympic torch through the suburb of Saint-Denis. He gave flavor to a badminton match between the United States and China: “As you see, this doesn't stop until the coffin drops.” She played with gymnasts Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles and donned dressage boots with her friend Martha Stewart.
“I was just trying to embody all the things I remembered as a kid about the Olympics,” Snoop said, in an interview in his trailer on the set of “The Voice” in December. “Respecting what it takes to become a professional at that level. Trying to bring my Snoop Dogg flavor to the table.”
Fans may have assumed this was Snoop's new surroundings. A grizzled singing competition judge on “The Voice.” Long Beach Olympics ambassador.
But Snoop Dogg, the MC, the laconic voice that defined West Coast gangsta rap in the '90s, never left us. On Friday, he will release “Missionary,” a long-awaited spiritual successor to his 1993 debut, “Doggystyle,” and a decades-in-the-making reunion with producer and mogul Dr. Dre.
The album's existence is historic, a reminder of how unique these two are in a studio. But after Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX” united the world south of the 10 Freeway, “Missionary” says something important about how West Coast rap matures with grace.
“Dre's hungry, just like I'm hungry,” Snoop said. “He knows what he wants sonically and what I want vocally. I don't want to rap like a 19 year old. The perspective I speak from is that of a grown man who survived. “I will never lose that spirit of a young MC, but I have to make an album as I am.”
In 1993, Snoop's debut, “Doggystyle,” shocked the world.
“This is his first album, but right now Snoop Doggy Dogg may be the most famous rapper in the world,” the Times' Jonathan Gold wrote at the time. The LP's stories of raunchy sex and brazen violence were bolstered by exquisite G-funk musicality: “No rapper has ever occupied a beat like Snoop does, sliding around corners, resting on syncopations.” Dre's production “takes hip-hop to another level… Organic but relentless, the air full of jingle bells, sighs and countermelodies.”
Meanwhile, a lot has happened in West Coast hip-hop: the bi-coastal gang rivalry that claimed the life of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious BIG Snoop's acquittal of murder in 1996. Death Row Records dissolves in acrimony. Dre discovering Eminem and 50 Cent. Snoop performs at the Kennedy Center and invests in marijuana, technology, food and cocktails. Dre sells his Beats Electronics headphone company to Apple to become hip-hop's first billionaire.
Today, Snoop cuts the same figure he did in the '90s: tall and lean, with cascading tresses and a warm, joking demeanor peppered with his signature slang. He has had 11 top 10 albums and hit singles like Pharrell Williams' inimitable “Drop It Like It's Hot.”
But he admits that “young people don't know the old Snoop Dogg. “They don’t know the rapper,” he laughed.
“The only thing they know is that I have to serve all my audiences, Martha Stewart's audience. I had to make my own version of CoComelon, Doggyland, because I was tired of my grandchildren not paying attention to me. I have to be a classy adult with them. But now I can go back to my gangsta group and be a gangsta again.”
Neither Snoop nor Dre expected that it would take them 31 years to make another full album together as rapper and producer respectively. But anyone who saw them headlining Coachella in 2012 could tell they never lost that alchemy.
“Missionary” harkens back to their greatest achievement together; The title gives it away. It will be released on Snoop's former label, Death Row Records, to which Snoop bought back the rights in 2022. Guests tour Dre's vast catalog, with cameos from Eminem and 50 Cent, and great samples and cameos from Sting, Jelly Roll and the deceased Tom. Insignificant.
“It's like Michael Jordan meets Phil Jackson again,” Snoop said. “Dre was thinking, 'Look, let me put you back in the musical position that you need to be in. As far as star power goes, you're there, but people forgot that you made music because you do a lot of things. Let me put you back in the perspective where music is your foreground.'”
“Nobody produces me better than Dr. Dre,” Snoop continued. “But I had to go back and become a student and be humbled and given direction.”
Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg perform during the Super Bowl halftime show in Inglewood in 2022.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
Lyrically, the album is firmly in the present, an LP that fondly remembers a fierce young man several lives later. Two generationally important artists with nothing to prove but much to achieve.
“This is a passion project for me,” Dre said in a rare interview with The Times. “I've been dying to get back in the studio with my brother Snoop for years. Snoop has never gone anywhere, but to be honest, I wish he would sit down and focus on something. So I think my focus was to show the growth and where we've come in the last 30 years. “The lyrics can’t stray too far from the streets, but we also have to show a level of maturity over the years.”
To hear the two trading tacky bars on “Outta Da Blue” and dancing to the edgy funk of “Pressure” is to return to whatever pot-ridden house party you fell in love with in Los Angeles, their two voices inseparable from the identity of SoCal. On “Gunz & Smoke,” Snoop reclaims his beloved hometown: “Bullet holes in the palm trees, dirty money in the laundry / 10 toes in the cement, n… know where to find me.”
He drops some funny lines about his age on “Sticcy Situation”: “Look at daddy Warbucks / Huh, I probably had your aunt on my tour bus,” and looks at today's rap culture with a familiar jaundice: “The times they're a-changin' . ', young n— is dangerous / Rich and shameless do anything to be famous… Once upon a time the Dogg went through it all / Retreats and breaking laws, the streets under my clutches.”
“There's one thing about rock or country or jazz: It doesn't matter how old they are, this s– is good,” Snoop said. “It is not based on the past. I come from hip-hop where it was essential to be original, fly every time you went out and not do anything twice. For me, it's an opportunity to prove that I'm one of the best MCs of all time and I'm going to take advantage of that moment.”
On “Last Dance With Mary Jane,” they pulled out the holy grail of a Tom Petty sample as the backbone of the song. Dre and Petty were connected through Interscope founder Jimmy Iovine, and Petty (a fellow cannabis fan) seemed to anticipate that Dre and Snoop would use it one day.
“I have this video clip with Tom Petty that says 'If Dre ever tries the song Mary Jane's Last Dance, he'll have an instant hit on his hands,'” Dre said. “It comes with an enormous amount of confidence. And you know, Snoop is putting his entire career, his legacy and everything he's built in my hands. So I have to take care of that and make sure it is presented in the right way.”
“It's like Michael Jordan meeting Phil Jackson again,” Snoop said of working with Dr. Dre again. “Dre was thinking, 'Look, let me put you back in the musical position you need to be in.'”
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
“Missionary” comes on the heels of Kendrick Lamar’s modern West Coast masterpiece, “GNX” (“Maybe it’s a cosmic coincidence, but it’s really weird that all of this is happening at the same time in our circle,” Dre said. ). Snoop shared the stage with Dre and Lamar at the 2022 Super Bowl, but took a little dig at the track “wacked murals,” where Kendrick chastised Snoop for posting a clip with his nemesis Drake's diss track in the background.
Snoop handled it with typical good humor: “It was the groceries. king of the west of the west,” he tweeted. But Snoop acknowledged that it was a changing of the guard.
“We're a family, so I didn't take it any other way than the right way,” Snoop said. “He is the King of the West right now. There was a time when I was the King of the West, when my job was to take responsibility for making sure the West was on the right path. “That’s his job right now and he’s doing an incredible job.”
The two were first set to show off their reunion last year, for an event at the Hollywood Bowl celebrating the 30th anniversary of “Doggystyle.” However, they canceled the dates in solidarity with striking entertainment workers. “I work with these people and I knew that being with them would help Hollywood understand that we need these people to get paid,” Snoop said. “My voice is big. “If Snoop Dogg is standing, we don’t want him to be against us.”
Other markers of time have also begun to sink in. Losing Quincy Jones, Snoop's old friend and mentor, was painful. “We were very united. “His daughter Kidada was a good friend of ours even before she met Tupac,” Snoop said. “When I got my star on the Walk of Fame, he asked me to come give a speech. I wonder, 'How the hell did Quincy Jones come to give a speech? I haven't done enough to be here.'”
But the most heartbreaking came when Dre suffered three strokes and a brain aneurysm in March, after Snoop's daughter Cori suffered her own stroke at age 24 this year. The two health crises shook Snoop, a devoted husband and family man.
“It affected me mentally, physically and spiritually,” Snoop said, briefly turning somber. “There is a lot that can be done in these situations, but you can try to fully support their rehabilitation. I was always there for my daughter. “She's getting stronger and better, and it makes me feel even better knowing that Dre and I still have our same friendship from day one.”
“Dre's hungry, just like I'm hungry,” Snoop said. “He knows what he wants sonically and what I want vocally. I don't want to rap like a 19 year old. The perspective I speak from is that of a grown man who survived.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Even when he revives his old gangsta mystique in “Missionary,” talking about family seems to bring out something tender in Snoop. When a Times reporter mentioned that his mother was visiting Los Angeles for the holidays and was curious to try the products at his Inglewood pot shop on Sunday, Snoop's eyes lit up.
“My mom recently passed away, and every time she hears the word 'mom' and your mom is still here, she's blessed,” Snoop said. “I can roll one up for you so DO-double-G can roll one up for you.”
He dug into his backpack and divided up some buds from his personal flower stash, a welcome gift to the West Coast.
“That's the best death row moment,” Snoop said, inhaling deeply. “Mommy, I love you.”
