Snoop Dogg credits Michel’le with crafting the opening words to his newly-turned-30, Grammy-nominated track “Gin and Juice.”
In a recent interview with Big Boy, Snoop was asked if he remembered the recording session for the song, which was certified Gold by the RIAA within months of its release. Snoop confirmed that he did indeed recall the song’s creation, including a fateful spaghetti dinner that led to its first line.
"Yep, I remember who gave me my first line," Snoop said when asked about the song around two minutes into the video above. "Michel’le gave me that first line. Nobody knew that. We was eating some spaghetti one night. She had, like, spaghetti with mushrooms and shit in it. And then she made one of them Kamikaze drinks and then she was like, 'Snoop Dogg, you should start your song off with like, with so much drama in the L-B-C.' I’m like, I like that line."
A few days later, Snoop said, he took Michel’le's suggestion when hitting the booth.
"I remembered what she said and I just started it off with, 'With so much drama in the L-B-C,' and the rest just [came] naturally, just telling a story about me walking through the hood and doing my thing and whatnot. But I just remember her saying that line and giving me the first line. That’s always the hard part, getting that first line to the song started. So when she gave me that first line, I was off and running."
As everyone knows, that line landed on the final version of the track, which appears on Snoop's debut, Doggystyle. While the album itself was released in November 1993, "Gin and Juice" wasn't pushed as a single until January 1994.
As for R&B singer Michel’le, she had a successful career of her own, landing a Top 10 hit in 1989 with "No More Lies" which helped her self-titled debut album go gold. She was also featured on songs like "We're All in the Same Gang," 2Pac's "Run tha Streets," and Tha Dogg Pound's "Let's Play House." She dated Dr. Dre for several years in the '90s and later dated Suge Knight. In 2016, her life story was the subject of the drama film, Surviving Compton: Dre, Suge & Michel'le, which detailed the years of abuse she suffered under Dr. Dre that was omitted from the movie Straight Outta Compton.
The year 1994 is an oft-referenced one in music history. In addition to "Gin and Juice" becoming a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and further cementing Snoop as a star, that year also saw the tragic death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and the mainstream breakthrough of Green Day, whose Dookie album was released that February. In many ways, it was a transitional year for the industry, with many of the stars we now consider longtime legends making their first big splashes on the charts.
Earlier this month, Snoop teased what’s next in his discography during a conversation with Michael Strahan on Good Morning America. Per Snoop, he and Dr. Dre have been in the studio “for the past eight months,” working on a new album. Previously, a Snoop and Dre project had been teased under the possible title Missionary, marking a thematic continuation to the aforementioned Doggystyle.
