When Snoop Dogg expressed his concerns about Cardi B’s “WAP” lyrics, he was rightfully called out by fans for evoking a double standard that has persisted in hip-hop and society as a whole for far too long. However, judging from a recent interview Snoop gave to Fatman Scoop, it wasn’t motivated by maliciousness but rather it possibly stemmed from his own experiences in changing his lyrics after realizing the power of his words in the wake of his 1993 murder case.
As he explained during the stream, “On my second album, Tha Doggfather, when I beat my murder case, I redirected my pen to write life because I felt like I had wrote death all up until that point.” This was seen most strongly in his 1993 single “Murder Was The Case,” which preceded his actually being charged with murder when he was accused of committing a drive-by on a rival gang member alongside his bodyguard.
“Around that time, me, Tupac, Biggie, [Ice] Cube—all of the rappers that was rapping around that time, we was writing what we was living,” he elaborated. Some of us was writing life, and some of us was writing death, but that’s what we was living.” He says switching up his style cost him fans but that he was willing to accept the loss if it meant turning his career around.
““When I started writing Tha Doggfather, I lost a lot of fans, I lost a lot of homies, because they wanted me to keep it gangsta after beating the murder case,” he said. “They wanted me to glamorize and glorify, but I was like, somebody’s life was lost. My life was changed. This is a real situation.”
Snoop not only turned around his lyrics but his life as well, becoming more of a role model and using his positive influence to make more of a difference, including in getting Death Row Records co-founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris pardoned after almost 30 years in prison.
Watch Snoop’s interview with Fatman Scoop below.