If further proof were needed that they do things differently in America, then
the rise of Snoop Dogg should remove any doubts. The man who, with Dr Dre,
turned West Coast gangsta rap into a global music phenomenon, has served
time for crack cocaine possession, been acquitted of murder, produced porn
movies and is accompanied everywhere by a crew of bodyguards. “We move like
that just to make sure I get through the day,” explains Snoop. “Everybody
don’t love me.”
The irony is that, apart from some disgruntled and dangerous gang members from
the rougher neighbourhoods of LA, most Americans seem to love Snoop. How
else can you explain why he pops up on prime-time sitcoms such as Just
Shoot Me and King of the Hill, or how he had his own comedy
sketch series, the cryptically titled Doggy Fizzle Televizzle, on MTV
last year? At a time when the sight of Janet Jackson’s exposed breast on the
Superbowl half-time show can cause outrage across America, Snoop has become
something of a mainstream icon.
So it’s no surprise that Hollywood has come calling. Having made his debut in
the 1998 stoner comedy Half-Baked, Snoop has quietly been racking up
acting credits in films including Baby Boy, Bones and Training
Day. Now, in his highest-profile role yet, he is playing Huggy Bear in
the big-screen version of the 1970s television series Starsky & Hutch.
A little grittier than other US cop shows of its time, Starsky & Hutch
drew a lot of its appeal from Huggy Bear’s jivetalking, pimp-styled hipster
informant. Huggy was played originally by Antonio Fargas, a veteran of many
early 1970s blaxploitation movies, but it’s a measure of how perfectly Snoop
fits the part that you soon forget Fargas’s portrayal.
“I grew up watching Starsky & Hutch as a kid and Huggy Bear
was a legend before Snoop even existed, so it was a pleasure to bring him
back to life, add my flavours and make him what I thought he should be,”
says Snoop in a soft, tired voice. Thirty-two years old, 6ft 4in (1.93m)
tall, and very thin, with a goatee and his hair in cornrows, or braids, he
was born Cordozar Broadus, but was known as “Calvin” until his mum started
calling him “Snoop ” after his favourite cartoon character, Snoopy from Peanuts.
He runs on Snoop-time, which makes our post-lunch meeting the early morning
for him, but it doesn’t take him long to warm up. He has a sly sense of
humour and the timing of a natural comic. “I’m more funny than I am, you
know, hard. When I was a kid, people thought I’d be a comedian before I
would be a rapper. My persona is all about having fun.” That hasn’t always
been the case, but Snoop is as popular as he is precisely because of his
ability to reinvent himself.
Certainly, it’s a long way from selling crack on the streets of his home town
Long Beach, a 40-minute drive from LA, to acting opposite the established
comic stars Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, who play Starsky and Hutch.
Snoop wasn’t fazed by the prospect, though. “They made my job real easy. All
I had to do was stay in the pocket and do what I do. But at the same time
they raised the level of my game. They’ve got that chemistry, so I knew I
had to step my game up.”
He’s fond of sporting metaphors. He runs his own American football team, the
Snoop Dogg All-Stars, and his next film role is with Adam Sandler in the
remake of The Longest Yard, a 1974 Burt Reynolds film about
convicts who form a football team to take on the prison guards. Vinnie Jones
appeared in a lacklustre British version, The Mean Machine, in 2001,
but Jones seems to lack Snoop’s dedication to acting. Faced with stripping
down to his boxers in Starsky & Hutch, Snoop consoled himself
with the thought that the role demanded it.
“It was hard, because I don’t like to expose my goods like that. But because I
was in character, I found a way to pull it off. I really live the
characters. I like to go home with them to make sure that I’m really putting
my all into them. I don’t like doing things halfway. You know, I’m a
crybaby. I hate to lose, so I do whatever it takes to win, whether it’s
studying, preparing or training.”
His approach is now paying off, but why did it take him so long to get into
films? “I never thought it could happen to me, so I was content with being
the dopest rapper in the world,” he says modestly. “I didn’t really know if
I could juggle a lot of different careers; I thought I was limited to doing
one move. But as I grew, with time I figured my natural calling was to be a
hustler, to do as many things as possible. That’s what I’m good at and that
’s why you can see me on TV, or in a movie, or hear me on a record. It’s
because I’m a hustler.”
Snoop proclaimed that very fact on his first album in 1993, the seminal Doggystyle.
It sold more than four million copies in the US, thanks to its combination
of Snoop’s slick, very street rhymes and Dr Dre’s awesome production, and it
established him as the biggest name in hip-hop. His sales have slipped
since, but he has made six albums, an amazing feat by the standards of rap,
where few artists manage more than one or two before being supplanted by the
latest contender.
In part, his longevity can be put down to his canny habit of collaborating
with the likes of Eminem and Dre. But long before Marshall Mathers emerged
from Detroit to make hip-hop as mainstream in America as country music,
Snoop was benefiting from rap’s burgeoning white audience. “I haven’t
performed in front of a completely black crowd since 1996. It crossed over
for me from day one,” he claims. “All the concerts I play are mixed, unless
I do some ghetto nightclub.”
Of course, being white ensured that Eminem got his chance to star in a movie, 8
Mile, rather more quickly than Snoop got his break in Hollywood.
Snoop, though, was busy behind the camera as the producer of the Girls Gone
Wild videos, in which drunk college girls flashed their breasts, and
then as the producer and host of two hardcore porn videos set to his own
music.
“That’s a great market and it had been untapped as far as the rap world goes.
I won an AVN (the Oscar of the porn industry) and that felt like a Grammy or
any other kind of award. Even though it’s an adult film, it’s still a film.”
Money seems to have been the main motivation for the move into porn. “In the
beginning I had the ‘show’, but no ‘business’, and this is called
‘showbusiness’. Now I’ ve got them both.”
Despite the six months that he spent in jail in 1991 for crack possession and
the 1993 murder charge (he was acquitted in early 1996), he says he has no
regrets about his past as a gang member. “I wouldn’t change it, you know. I
always say there’s one incident that I’d change, but other than that I’m
happy with my life.” His friends from the old days make up his entourage,
and they’re the only ones allowed to call him by his real name.
He now lives with his wife and three kids in the suburban bliss of the San
Fernando Valley, outside LA, alongside soccer moms and accountants. So
respectable is he these days that last year he tried to stop smoking pot.
“For a minute,” he smiles. His favourite movies include Scarface,
The Godfather and Black Caesar, but he says that he has no
desire to play villains. “People know I can go gangster, but it’s cooler to
see me making you laugh.”
What is certain is that he’s serious about his film career. “The acting is
starting to become a big necessity for me,” he says. “People want to see me
on the big screen, so I’m really looking for those roles that are going to
stretch me and take me out of the Snoop Dogg persona. But I know and
understand that the music is what created that avenue for me, so I could
never leave that behind.”
Dr Dre will produce his next album, but even if he never made another record,
Snoop’s place in the hip-hop pantheon is secure. But it isn’t enough.
“Making history is like making love, it’s a great feeling. I’ve been part of
history a couple of times and a lot of it wasn’t planned, some was
coincidence and a lot was luck, but after it happens more than twice, you
have to say: ‘This is me. This is what I do. I make history.
’”
- Starsky & Hutch goes on general release on March 19.
