During an appearance on Big U’s Checc’N-In podcast, Snoop Dogg opened up about coming up in the rap game amid the rise of the West Coast’s hip-hop scene.
At the 26-minute mark of the episode, Snoop revealed how he missed a chance to feature on Dr. Dre’s original version of Eazy-E’s 1988 hit “Eazy Duz It.”
According to the Doggystyle rapper, Dre asked Snoop if he could rap, implying that he wanted him to lay a verse on the track. However, the Long Beach native says he “froze up,” because he “wasn’t ready.”
“He [Dr. Dre] came over one Thanksgiving and Warren G had me nervous because he was telling Dre ‘Snoopy can rap’ and I was like man shut the fuck up, I ain’t ready yet,” Snoop explained. “So Dre takes us to the back room and he starts playing that ‘He once was a thug from around the way,’ before it had even come out and he [Dr. Dre] turned to me and was like ‘You rap?’ and I’m like nah I don’t rap!...That was my moment and I froze up on cuz I wasn’t ready.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Snoop explained what later kickstarted his relationship with Dre. The pair’s relationship, which would lead to 1992’s The Chronic and 1993’s Doggystyle, began when Warren G snuck a demo tape into an N.W.A. party. The demo was a project made by 213, the trio comprised of Snoop, Warren, and Nate Dogg.
“So a couple of years later we made a cassette, putting all that gangsta shit down and Warren G goes to this N.W.A. bachelor party,” he said. “So they’re in there rocking and the music cuts off so Warren G slips my cassette in, with 213 and now the party back rocking and he [Dr. Dre] was like ‘Who is that’? and Warren G was like ‘That’s my homeboy, that’s my group 213’….and Dre said I’m gonna call him first thing Monday morning.”
Later on, Snoop touched on his recent acquisition of Death Row Records, which he purchased in February from the Blackstone-controlled company MNRK Music Group. Snoop’s purchase of Death Row started because he was trying to acquire his masters from eOne, which owned the label before American toy company Hasbro bought them out in 2021.
“I was trying to get my masters from eOne,” he shared. “All I was concerned with was my masters but they talked to me like a b and make me ho for my shit and it rubbed me the wrong way. So I went to Def Jam and did a two-year play over there….Then a good friend of mine told me eOne sold Death Row to some people that don’t know what to do with it...So I talked to them and was like ‘What’s up with those masters, not just mine all of them, everything...I don’t give a fuck what it costs. I need that.”
Watch Snoop Dogg’s full appearance on the Checc’N-In podcast here.
