On the Web site for the run-and-shoot video game, True Crime: Streets of L.A., there is a link that explains “how to unlock Snoop”–meaning how to convert the game’s crime-busting hero, Nick Kang, into a different protagonist: Snoop Dogg.
The temptation to find the digital Dogg, hidden deep in the game by Activision last year, is fueled by Web site tips on how to play in “Snoop Mode.”
“Snoop Mode.”
Who among us has not, at some point, wanted to enter Snoop Mode? And not just on a game screen but here in the real world, where Snoop has become a media darling–a talk-show regular, Madison Avenue hawker, studio collaborator and king of the Hollywood cameo.
As Snoop, 31, rolls through the nation with Linkin Park’s “Projekt Revolution,” which stops at Alpine Valley on Aug. 27, he brings more than his rap hits and West Coast sizzle.
Snoop Dogg is a phenomenon, one that goes beyond his work in movies such as “Soul Plane” and “Starsky & Hutch;” his hit adult video “Girls Gone Wild: Doggy Style;” and his latest hit single, “Beautiful.”
People have been dressing like Snoop since he first showed up in cornrows and flannel, the baby gangster from “The LBC”–Long Beach, Calif.–and protege of Dr. Dre.
Nowadays, people at Halloween parties imitate his newer look–the dandified, mack-daddy pimp. They pick up on his lingo: from “Beeyatch!” to the classic “with my mind on my money and my money on my mind” from 1993’s “Gin and Juice.” The more recent “izzle” obsession went so far into the mainstream that Snoop had to call a moratorium on the language he popularized.
More than just an interesting career we follow, Snoop clearly is a pop culture itch we have to scratch. Snoop has done exemplary work over the past decade burrowing under our skin and coming to rest in our brain.
It happens sometimes that certain public figures become stand-ins for our inner selves and their fame and capacity to fascinate exceed their measurable talents. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Teutonic lunk in all of us. Britney Spears? Our inner good girl gone wild. Snoop? The embodiment of tricked-out coolness.
When the young Calvin Broadus was constructing a rap persona, he adapted the affectionate nickname he had received as a child at home: Snoopy, as in Charlie Brown’s mellow pooch.
Snoop Doggy Dogg was born. Signed to the infamous Death Row label, he rapped about easy women and dead cops in his serene, silver-tongued style. But gangsta is so last decade.
Snoop has jumped full-force into the rough trade of adult entertainment–not as a performer but as a producer, brand name and all-around emcee to X-rated goings-on. This move tracks his general makeover from laid-back ’90s gangster to full-time ladies’ man and overdressed pimp. It also coincides with Snoop’s 2002 announcement that he was quitting drugs and booze.
So we have a slightly cleaned-up entertainer and porn entrepreneur who is trying to put much of his gangster past behind him.
Is this an improvement?
Snoop and his rap peers have long been criticized for celebrating the rogue elements of society–gang-banger, dopehead, pimp. That criticism follows him still. Reviewers groaned at the juvenile comedy “Soul Plane,” in which Snoop piloted what Entertainment Weekly called “a pimped-out microcosm of black stereotypes.”
This is not a new debate. In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, rappers were praised for warning of the eruption–if only people had listened–and panned for playing to white fears of the inner city. Snoop talked about the issue this summer while making promotional rounds for “Soul Plane.”
“When white boys make movies like this with an all-white cast and they’re cracking jokes and doing their thing, nobody ever say nothing,” he told Eurweb columnist Jawn Murray.
But when African-Americans get together and start talking the same way, “it’s a problem,” Snoop said “Standup comedians do it their whole life. Eddie Murphy did it. Richard Pryor did it. Redd Foxx did it. … In the black community, it’s cool to bag on each other and talk about each other.”
But rappers may invite more scrutiny because some draw on real-life drama and violence, and make their image and music an extension of their biographies. Snoop and a bodyguard successfully argued self-defense to beat a murder rap in a 1993 shooting. He later left the Death Row label.
Snoop survived an apparent attempt on his life in April 2003, when a car pulled alongside his motorcade in Los Angeles and the occupants opened fire.
Now a father of three young children, Snoop is not repudiating his past so much as absorbing into his newer ventures. His forthcoming album is called “R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece.” His next movie is “The L.A. Riot Spectacular,” a less-than-serious treatment of the ’92 riots. It stars Emilio Estevez, has Snoop as its narrator and features cameos by, among others, porn star Ron Jeremy.
So long as Americans demand an edgy yet cuddly incarnation of sex, money, comedy and violence, Snoop will have a service to provide. Like the song says, Snoop’s Upside Your Head.
Doggy treats
Snoop is up for two MTV Video Music Awards, which will be handed out Aug. 29.
– Best rap video for “P.I.M.P. Remix,” 50 Cent featuring Snoop Dogg and G-Unit.
– Best hip-hop video for “Holidae In,” Chingy featuring Ludacris and Snoop Dogg.
Show stop
The Projekt Revolution Tour, featuring Linkin Park, Korn, Snoop Dogg, The Used and Less Than Jake, stops Aug. 27 at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wis. Tickets: $50.50
SNAP JUDGMENT
“The Hard Way”
213
213, the gangsta-rap supergroup formed when Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg and Warren G were still Long Beach teens, on Tuesday will release its long-awaited debut, “The Hard Way.” Nate Dogg and Warren G haven’t been factors since the decade-old single “Regulate,” so Snoop is the rightful star of the show here. As always, his laconic, lazy-tongued raps are butter-smooth and occasionally hilarious. But 213 has all the trappings of a water-treading effort–underwhelming beats, played-out G-funk imagery and playa-hating galore. Moreover, without Warren G’s half-brother Dr. Dre on hand to produce, the proceedings get stale quickly.
–Geoff Harkness, Redeye special contributor
Riding in style
Although Chrysler designed its new 300 to evoke memories of Sunday-afternoon drives to grandmother’s house, it has instead become the hot car for the hip-hop community, thanks in part to Snoop Dogg.The trend-setting rapper and actor got his new Chrysler 300 after leaving a voice-mail message for a Chrysler executive–a message conveniently leaked to the Detroit News:
“Yo, what up? This is big Snoop Dogg, trying to put these new legs down for this new 300C,” Snoop said in the message. “What I gotta do to get that brand-new 300 up outta you? Get back in touch with my nephew so you can make it happen, then it’s official like a referee’s whistle. If you want this car to blow, give it to me. This is Snoop Dogg. Preach!”
The Chrysler 300 has since found a spot in Snoop’s driveway, as well as 50 Cent’s video.
In turn, young car buyers are snapping up the cars faster than Chrysler can make them–signaling the power of hip-hop artists to make a brand or product an instant must-have.
–The Baltimore Sun
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MUSIC
NOW/NEXT: 213’s “The Hard Way” and Snoop’s “R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece”
YESTERDAY: “Paid Tha Cost to Be Da Boss”
ANCIET HISTORY: “Doggystyle”
MOVIES
NOW/NEXT: “The L.A. Riot Spectacular”
YESTERDAY: “Starsky & Hutch”
ANCIET HISTORY: “Half Baked”
LANGUAGE
NOW/NEXT: Chuuch, tabanacle and preach, as influenced by
Chicago’s “Bishop” Don Magic Juan
YESTERDAY: Izzle
ANCIET HISTORY: Beeyatch
PERSONA
NOW/NEXT: Pimp
YESTERDAY: Grown-up gangsta
ANCIET HISTORY: Baby gangsta
EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
NOW/NEXT: Porn entrepreneur
YESTERDAY: Run-ins with the law
ANCIET HISTORY: Drugs, hustling
