Snoop Doggy Dogg (1971—)

Perhaps the most recognized performer of the gangsta rap tradition, Snoop Doggy Dogg emerged in 1993 with two commercially successful albums on controversial Death Row/Interscope Records. Notorious for his violent and explicit lyrics, Snoop Doggy Dogg became a central target of political censorship and attack soon after his appearance on the rap scene. Despite his initial commercial success, the rapper's career began to flounder after gangsta rap fell out of favor in the latter half of the 1990s. By 1998, Snoop Doggy Dogg had changed his name to Snoop Dogg, switched music labels, and toned down his graphic and controversial act in an effort to maintain his status in the industry.

Born Calvin Broadus in 1971, he was nicknamed Snoop as a child and raised in an urban ghetto in California, suffering through a childhood of harsh social realities. One month after his high school graduation, the soon-to-be rap star was arrested on drug charges and spent the next three years in and out of jail on three separate charges related to drug possession.

Following his release from jail, Snoop began to hone his skills as a rapper and shopped a demo tape of his work around his hometown. Soon, he was introduced to Dr. Dre, a key member of the controversial rap group N.W.A. Dre invited the young rapper to make a cameo appearance on his song "Deep Cover," which soon reached number one on the rap charts. In 1991, Snoop was invited to appear on Dre's critically acclaimed solo album The Chronic, and the young rapper's performances became legendary in the hip-hop community. Their rapping duet on the song "Nothin' but a 'G' Thang" launched the single into the top five on the pop charts, establishing for the first time hardcore rap as crossover music. Snoop's unique rap style—aggressive but melodic, nasal and "cool"—created an instant buzz on the streets. After appearing on three major magazine covers, the widespread anticipation for Snoop's solo project seemed to be unprecedented in the history of rap music.

Nothing could prepare the young rapper for the attention he would receive with his debut 1993 album, Doggystyle. The album sold eight hundred thousand copies in its first week and debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. With his lanky, six-foot-four-inch frame and his long, braided hair, Snoop presented an image of black masculinity that hadn't been seen before. To his fans, the rapper appeared slightly effeminate but also menacing and hardcore. Through his realistic, graphic lyrics about living in the ghetto, Snoop helped bring to public attention the form of hip-hop known as gangsta rap. In this musical form, rappers portrayed themselves as instruments of menace and terror in order to shed light on the problems of youth living in the harsh social realities of urban ghettos. The success of Doggystyle also helped establish the West Coast as a viable center for the production of rap music.

Nonetheless, Snoop's success was a double-edged sword. Along with the Death Row record label and the label's head, Suge Knight, Snoop came under the critical scrutiny of a number of politicians and advocates for his glorification of violence and criminality, his explicit language, and his promotion of hustler and pimp lifestyles. Moreover, Snoop's legal troubles and his portrayal of criminality also seemed to spill into his offstage life. In the month before Doggystyle was released, Snoop was charged as an accomplice to the shooting death of a young black man. After receiving the legal services of O. J. Simpson trial lawyer Johnnie Cochran, Snoop was acquitted in 1996. Yet Snoop's brush with the law only boosted his credibility among his fans, as they witnessed his offstage life blend into his art. As a result, his second album, Murder Was the Case, sold more than two million copies. By the mid-1990s, Snoop had also became one of the leading proponents of an escalating and highly publicized war of words between East Coast and West Coast rappers.

Eventually, however, Snoop's career suffered as gangsta rap began to weaken in its cultural power. In 1996, Death Row Records buckled under massive censorship from political conservatives, and as the year wore on, the hip-hop community became revolutionized by the untimely shooting deaths of hip-hop's two biggest stars, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., and by the incarceration of Death Row's Suge Knight. Unprepared to respond to the changing culture, Snoop's third album, Tha Doggfather (1997) suffered poor critical reviews and limited commercial attention. To increase his bad fortune, the rapper was then sued by Suge Knight's wife, who also acted as Snoop's manager, for millions of dollars in unpaid management fees. As Time/Warner sold its share of Interscope Records to MCA, Snoop found his musical home of Death Row Records in serious disrepair and public disrepute. Yet the record company continued to claim that the rapper contractually owed them another six albums.

In 1998, Snoop returned to visibility. Louisiana's No Limit Records label, run by emerging hip-hop entrepreneur and rapper Master P, entered into a deal with Death Row Records to release Snoop from future responsibilities. After having sold seven million albums in six years, the rapper released his fourth album, Da Story Is to Be Sold Not to Be Told on the No Limit Records label. In the same year, he appeared in bit parts in the straight-to-video movie The Game of Life and in the feature film release Half-Baked, and he decided to drop the word "Doggy" from his name to distance himself from his association with the gangsta rap idiom which he had helped popularize. In media interviews, Snoop Dogg began to publicize his offstage role as a father to two children. The rapper described his newfound image in 1998 as "more educated, wise, and more of a thinker—more for life."

—Jason King

Further Reading:

Powell, Kevin. "Hot Dogg." Vibe. Vol. 1, No. 1, September1993, 51-55.

Ro, Ronin. Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Violent Fall of Death Row Records. 1st ed. New York, Doubleday, 1998.