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In the world of hip-hop, the figure of Snoop Dogg is an image ingrained into the minds of millions of people. When pulling that image together, Snoop, though often barely visibly behind the clouds of heavy smoke, is usually adorned in a blue durag. While he has long left his genuine gang-banging days behind him, Snoop’s affiliation with the Crips of California will never be squashed.

His association with the gang is partly why he became such a figurehead for the gangsta rap movement of the early 1990s. As the West Coast became a more volatile arena for hip-hop to flourish, acts like NWA and Ice Cube showed that mainstream success could be achieved by reflecting the criminal lifestyle that surrounded many of rap’s brightest stars.

One of the biggest success stories of the time was Snoop Dogg who, after joining Dr Dre on his seminal album The Chronic, delivered his own incredible album, Doggystyle and has never looked back. Now, he is considered one of the greats of the genre and continues to Crip walk through life with an unadulterated sense of accomplishment.

It’s fair to say that, during his time, Snoop has been around his fair share of real gangsters. Whether it is being in the middle of Tupac Shakur and Nas meeting face to face, with the New Yorker, according to Snoop, letting the West Coast rappers “slide, or out in the streets with the hundreds of gang members he has crossed paths with. However, there was one singer who he believed “out gangstered” him.

Singer Dionne Warwick may not be the first name you think of when dreaming up your perfect gangster, but the veteran singer sure knew how to bring Snoop down a peg or two. They met when Warwick invited Snoop and Tupac Shakur to her home at 7am sharp. “These kids are expressing themselves, which they’re entitled to do. However, there’s a way to do it,” noted Warwick in the CNN documentary Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over.

“We were kind of like scared and shook up,” Snoop recalled as he and Pac arrived early for the meeting. “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.”

Warwick reflected on the meeting in a 2022 interview: “I wanted them to know that they were dealing with someone that — first of all, if I didn’t care about you, you would not have been invited to my home. … They all kind of knew that I was quite serious. I was giving them a spanking, and they wanted to know what I was giving them a spanking about.”

Warwick’s concerns lay mainly with the idea of the two rappers’ future, and how they and their families may react to their past dealings: “You guys are all going to grow up. 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?” she said.

“She was checking me at a time when I thought we couldn’t be checked,” he said. “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. I made it a point to put [out] records of joy — me uplifting everybody and nobody dying and everybody living.

“Dionne, I hope I became the jewel that you saw when I was the little, dirty rock that was in your house,” Snoop added. “I hope I’m making you proud.”