In an excerpt from the latest installment of Audible's Words + Music series, Snoop Dogg opened up about the creation of one of his most iconic songs, "Murder Was the Case."
“My peers, we wrote about death. You see, and I wrote that song ‘Murder Was the Case’ where I was like, ‘I came when my booboo’s ‘bout to have my baby.’ She wasn't even pregnant, and I hadn't even caught the murder case," he said of the iconic 1993 track, taken from his debut studio album Doggystyle. "That's the fucking crazy part about it. He was born May 20th, right? 1994. The murder case was in August of 1993. So I wrote ‘Murder Was the Case’ about some shit that had never happened in my life. I didn't have a baby. I didn't have a murder case, but my penmanship was writing shit that was about to happen."
Snoop Dogg was arrested on murder charges while working on Doggystyle in August of1993. He welcomed his first son Cordé with Shante Taylor in May 1994, and was later acquitted of the murder charge in February 1996.
"Once he was born, I had to reflect back on what I wrote. I want to live, not I want to die," he continued. "Having my first son, to see him, how he loved me, how he wanted to be around me, how he wanted to be in my arms, how we would do interviews because he’d just come sit on my lap. That shit, like, was touching to me, you know what I'm saying? Like, fuck Snoop Dogg, this lil’ n***a right here love me. I think that me having him and some of my friends not having babies or having that relationship with their babies caused them not to write about life because they were so used to writing about death."
The relationship with his son and his wife taught Snoop a lesson to not focus so much of his attention on death. "I had learned my lesson from writing ‘Murder Was the Case’ that maybe I shouldn't be writing about devilish shit like this when I can control the narrative and right about life, living, I'll see you tomorrow," he said. "Hey, how about this song I live to see tomorrow. Not, I see death around the corner. I'm gonna be dead in 10 minutes. No, fuck that. Not this song. I'm living.”
In a conversation with Fatman Scoop on Instagram Live in 2021, Snoop suggested that he felt he had only written about "death all up until" he worked on his second album, Tha Doggfather. "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, per Revolt. “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.”
In a separate excerpt from Audible's Words + Music episode, Snoop also talked about his first time meeting Dr. Dre. He said that he actually knew Dre's mother, Verna Young, and his brother Tyree before he met the legendary producer because they lived with Warren G's dad. "Warren G lived with them, so I was in with them and didn't know Dr. Dre," he said.
"First time I met him was at Warren G’s, I think they had like a Thanksgiving party at his dad's house. His dad was married to Dr. Dre's mom, so they have a Thanksgiving party at the house, Dre come over, I'm there with Warren G, we’re all in the living room," he continued. "Warren G’s got turntables with the cassettes in the back so he like, 'Let's go in the back, Dre. I got some turntables and Snoopy can rap.’ I’m like, why the fuck did he say that.’”
