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Snoop Dogg, and his Death Row Records boss Suge Knight, were riding high in the ’90s. Following the release of Snoop’s first album Doggystyle, as well as Dr Dre’s The Chronic, on which Snoop featured prominently, Death Row and its leading figures were at the top of the rap game—and they knew it. They were feeling confident about themselves, but, even so, it took just one meeting with a soul legend to put them in their place.

Dionne Warwick, the singer behind legendary songs like ‘Walk On By,’ ‘Alfie,’ and ‘Don’t Make Me Over,’ had heard Snoop during these early days of his career, and, frankly, something about his style greatly irritated her. In fact, she had a big problem with the era’s gangsta rap in general, and she wasn’t going to accept it quietly. To the contrary, she invited a group of hip-hop stars to her house to give them a piece of her mind. Suge and Snoop were among them, and, as Snoop later recalled, she directly challenged their way of doing things. Or, in Snoop’s own words, she “out-gangstered” them.

As revealed in the 2021 documentary Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over, Warwick told the rappers to arrive at her house at 7am—intimidated by the star, they made sure to arrive early. “We were kind of, like, scared and shook up,” Snoop recalled in the film. “We’re powerful right now, but she’s been powerful forever. Thirty-some years in the game, in the big home with a lot of money and success.”

Upon meeting Warwick, it became clear why they were invited to her house that morning. She had an issue with the way their music spoke about women, and she was calling them out on it in no uncertain terms. She demanded that these young men, right then and there, call her a b— to her face. This was, after all, a word they used to describe women all the time in their songs. Would they stand by it now, facing a real woman that they had respected for such a long time?

“You guys are all going to grow up,” Warwick admonished the group. “You’re going [to] have families. You’re going to have children. You’re going to have little girls, and one day that little girl is going to look at you and say, ‘Daddy, did you really say that? Is that really you?’ What are you going to say?”

The message was received. “She was checking me at a time when I thought we couldn’t be checked,” admitted Snoop, who, indeed, did go on to eventually have a daughter. “We were the most gangsta as you could be, but that day at Dionne Warwick’s house, I believe we got out-gangstered that day.”

Snoop claims that the meeting with Warwick really did have an impact, convincing him to make a change when it came to his musical approach. “I made it a point to put records of joy,” he said. “Me uplifting everybody and nobody dying and everybody living.”