Credit: Alamy

Dr Dre is known for being meticulous. In fact, it might be his greatest strength. Snoop Dogg has been around the NWA legend long enough to know what he’s like when it comes to being picky with music, and never takes things to heart when he makes suggestions. It was the case for the Long Beach rapper in 2008, with Dre making him rewrite a whole song.

Snoop and Dre have recorded countless hits together over the years. Their catalogue includes classics like ‘Still D.R.E.’, ‘Nuthin but a ‘G’ Thang’, ‘The Next Episode’, and more. It was Dre’s 1992 album The Chronic that catapulted Snoop’s career, with Dre going on to produce his iconic debut, Doggystyle, in 1993.

To this day, they’re still working together. The pair teamed up for the Doggystyle sequel, Missionary, in 2024, with Dre handling the entire production. They’re so close that Dre has had an input in many songs he didn’t even rap or produce on. In 2008, Snoop released one of his best albums, Tha Blue Carpet Treatment, which contained the single ‘That’s That Shit’.

Produced by Nottz, the track saw Snoop collaborating with R Kelly and landing a top 20 hit on the Billboard 200. Dre wasn’t involved in the song at all, except suggesting Snoop should scrap the entirety of his lyrics and start again. “Before, it would’ve been just a cool record. Now, it’s about to be a hit,” Snoop told DubCNN. “That’s what you get when you’re fucking with Dre. If you wanna fuck with him, you’re gotta be ready to accept his criticism and his approach on things.”

He added, “I always have been able to do that. I ain’t never really went and disrespected him and said ‘No, n*gga, I know what I’m talking about.’ But if I really rolled down and felt like I knew what I was talking about, he’d believe me. But for the most part, when I’m under his jurisdiction, I’m under his jurisdiction.”

It was a track he was confident in from the very beginning. It’s vintage Snoop with a true West Coast feeling, written alongside Death Row co-founder The D.O.C. During an interview with AllHipHop, Snoop revealed that Dre told him, “Take all your lyrics off, I don’t like ‘em. They’re wack.” From there, they got to work on writing some improved verses.

Snoop was looking for his next anthem and felt his R Kelly collaboration offered something different. “When I heard it, to me, it wasn’t really like ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’, it was like something completely different, because it was like a different tune, a different mode, a different view of music,” he said. In the end, it was the second biggest hit on the album behind the chart-topping ‘I Wanna Fuck You’.

Dre doesn’t need a credit for making a song better. He’s simply in it for the love of music and improving those around him. He’s proven time and time again that his attention to detail is warranted, and that’s exactly how he’s earned such a prestigious reputation.