What Snoop Dogg learned as a 12-year-old gang member
Long Beach icon Snoop Dogg has documented his history as a gang member extensively and, throughout his career, has warned about the dangers of joining a gang at a young age. However, he has also spoken about the few benefits of them.
Despite his now mythical status in hip-hop, Snoop Dogg was not always an emcee. Although Dr Dre’s stepbrother, Warren G, encouraged him to begin rapping before venturing into music, Snoop was an impressionable young man finding his way in life.
The Doggystyle creator has been in the spotlight for over 30 years since he appeared on Dr Dre’s debut single, ‘Deep Cover’, but even as he began to rise in the music industry, his past as a gang member continued to prohibit his progress.
It is, of course, incredibly common for hip-hop artists to have criminal pasts. However, as the home of gang culture, the divisions that exist in Los Angeles are deadly and from Long Beach to Crenshaw, Crips and Bloods effectively rule neighbourhoods.
Snoop Dogg couldn’t avoid this growing up, but in a 2018 interview with Howard Stern about his childhood, the ‘Gin & Juice’ rapper explained how being in a gang paradoxically harmed him in the short term but helped him in the long run.
After conducting a deep dive into Snoop Dogg’s life, Stern was pleasantly surprised at some of the positive things the Long Beach native sacrificed to be part of the Rolling 20 Crips.
Telling Snoop Dogg about what he had found, Stern stated, “When I look at your early life, it’s a pretty amazing story. When you were in high school, you were the star athlete of that school. You were not only an exceptional football player, you were also an extraordinary basketball player, and you had received several letters from colleges wanting you to play basketball for them.”
He continued, “And then, at that crucial point in your life, you ended up going to jail and never going to college and playing ball. It was Coke wrap! You were dealing some coke. When you look back on that time in your life, and they sent you to jail, it could have been a whole different career.”
Snoop Dogg has since set up his own football league for kids called the ‘Snoop Youth Football League’, which operates across the US. However, while speaking to Stern about his sporting background, he explained why he disregarded his athletic prospects, recalling, “I think that if I would have pushed myself, I could have been, but I wasn’t pushing myself. I was more entertained with the money and the fast-life and the things that were accessible without the work ethic.”
Explaining the work ethic he didn’t have as a youngster, Snoop added, “The basketball and the football required practice and attention and coaching, and I wasn’t really into that at that point.
Snoop Dogg was a Crip and explained to Stern how being in a gang and getting placed on the spot on a regular occasion forces you to acknowledge who you are, detailing, “As you get older, you experience different things, and you’re challenged with being someone who’s scared or someone who’s down.”
He added, “Someone who’s scared ain’t gonna do no crimes and someone who’s down won’t really be trying to impress a lot of people and doing things that are stupid because he’s young, and I was in the middle of both. Sometimes, I was scared, and sometimes, I was down, but I appreciate the fact that I had the opportunity to learn to be who I am now.”
Snoop was a Rollin 20s Crip on the East Side of Long Beach and created a collective from the area known as Tha Eastsidaz alongside Tray Deee and Goldie Loc. The gang-affiliated trio won ‘New Group Of The Year’ at the 2000 Source Awards.