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Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre have been friends for over 30 years. During the 1990s, the pair led a West Coast revolution that saw Los Angeles explode into the charts and surpass New York in popularity.

Snoop Dogg was first introduced to the world on Dr. Dre’s 1992 breakout hit, ‘Deep Cover. ‘ Although the song was not a conventional G-funk track, it was Dre’s debut solo single and the beginning of what grew into the legendary empire of Death Row.

Produced by the Compton beatmaker for the soundtrack of a film and recorded in 1991, the song was Dre’s first commercial release to feature Snoop and the lead single of his seminal album, The Chronic. The beatmaker didn’t like ‘Deep Cover’ when he made it, but it would prove to be a pivotal track not just for him and Snoop Dogg but for hip-hop itself. It marked the beginning of a huge shift in hip-hop away from New York and the East Coast.

The track was Dre and Snoop’s first collaboration, and the two knew fairly little about each other at the time. Dre was introduced to Snoop through his stepbrother, Long Beach rapper Warren G, in 1992. Looking to sign artists to his newly formed label, Death Row Records, Dre was highly intrigued when he heard Snoop Dogg on a 213 demo Warren G was playing for him. In fact, the rapper and producer was so fascinated that he told his stepbrother to bring Snoop down to the studio.

Snoop Dogg was signed to Death Row as their prodigy that same year. Dre introduced Snoop to the world as his protégé on ‘Deep Cover’, and since then, the two have gone on to make iconic and legendary music together.

For Dr Dre, ‘Deep Cover’ represented a clean break from NWA and signalled to Eazy-E that he was moving onward with a new sound and new friends. For Snoop, it marked a move away from the streets and the treacherous life he led before entering the music industry.

‘Deep Cover’ set the tone for what was to come. Dre’s unique production style and break away from N.W.A. saw his sound completely evolve with heavy inspiration from George Clinton and the P-funk movement of the 1970s. During an interview with his longtime friend and collaborator on Beats 1 radio in 2015, Snoop recalled how he came up with the lyrics to the song that set him up for unparalleled success in the music business.

Revealing he bounced his ideas and energy off Dr Dre, Snoop explained, “He just gave me the first line. He said, ‘Tonight’s the night I get in some shit.’ And I just took it from there. I just started thinking about all the shit I used to do, all the shit I was doing at the time, and I just put it into words. And it just came out so natural and so real, because it was real.” Listeners also gout to find out an extraordinary gem which was the revelation that Snoop wrote the lyrics in Dr Dre’s bedroom.

30 years after the track’s recording, the audio engineer who mixed the instrumental, John Payne, spoke with online music magazine HipHopDX about the importance of it first appearing on a soundtrack. Emphasising the benefits of its initial release, Payne explained, “That was a very, very good thing because it introduced the label and its artists prior to The Chronic; it was a good look. And before there was any nonsense, I can honestly say this, with that Deep Cover soundtrack, people on the East Coast, everybody was digging it. It was a very good introduction for Snoop.”

‘Deep Cover’ was pivotal for Snoop Dogg because his appearance on the soundtrack meant he was getting heard across the US not just locally. Furthermore, with a movie studio budget behind the soundtrack, people were instantly able to put a face to the name due to the track’s music video. The video for ‘Deep Cover’ included snippets from the film and immortalized a young Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg merely months before they would reach heights they never thought possible.