Credit: Alamy

Snoop Dogg had always been a musical kid growing up, but that isn’t to say his success in the music business was inevitable. Things very easily could have worked out the wrong way for him.

Snoop had a religious upbringing led by his mother, who sang in the local church choir. She encouraged Snoop to express himself through music, and, as a young boy, he learned how to sing and play piano at church. His mother also introduced him to old R&B records.

As he got older, Snoop developed other interests and had to start taking on jobs. He played football and made money selling sweets, delivering newspapers and bagging up groceries for people. But, through it all, he retained his musical streak and, eventually, he started rapping.

Snoop rapped at school, and, before long, he developed something of a reputation for it. As he recalled to the LA Times in 1993, “When I rapped in the hallways at school I would draw such a big crowd that the principal would think there was a fight going on. It made me begin to realise that I had a gift. I could tell that my raps interested people and that made me interested in myself.”

But as he got older, Snoop’s attention began to be pulled in the wrong direction. While his mother tried to keep him on track, he started to get involved in illegal activities and, before long, it caught up with him. Only a month after graduating from high school, he was arrested for a drug offense.

Snoop would be in and out of jail over the years that followed. “I want to stress something to the little kids out there,” he said during that LA Times interview. “There ain’t nothin’ cool about selling dope. I did it because I thought it was cool but I was wrong and I went to jail for it.”

But as bad as these stints in jail were for Snoop, they did have a silver lining. While he was locked up, he continued to rap—and he started to improve. “But when I was rappin’ in the county jail,” he recounted, “a lot of the older inmates told me, ‘Man, you’re too talented to be in here. You need to be outside, not wasting your life away with crime.’”

This message left its mark on Snoop. When he was released towards the end of 1989, he decided that his drug-dealing days were behind him. He would, from this point on, concentrate on making it as a rapper.

During another interview, recorded in 1994 and brought back to the surface on the 92bricks Instagram page, Snoop described his mindset following his release. “I didn’t want to go back to jail,” he said. “I wanted to do something with myself.”

So, as he explained, Snoop dedicated himself to “being a student.” He started making mixtapes and “leaving all that other madness alone on the streets and being more dedicated to rap.” He put his mind to a music career, and, nearly four decades later, it seems fair to conclude that he made the right choice.