Goodwill Hunting: Snoop Doggy Dogg

by matthew webber

Better Living Through Snoop Doggy Dogg:
A Symphony in Four Movements

I. G Funk Intro

"I listen to Snoop for vicarious living. I’m never gonna slap a ho."

My coworkers thought this quote was hilarious. They looked at me sitting there – bespectacled, be-sweatered, my skin as white as Snow (the rapper) – and lost their shit over what I’d just said. One of the reporters jotted it down; it later was printed in a book of random newsroom quotes. Thus, if they remember me at all, it’s for this. ("Webber? Oh yeah. The whitest kid ever.") I’m sure this was the moment when they all stopped laughing with me.

"Webber wants to slap a ho?"

My cheeks turned the color of blood. And Bloods. My eyes were already the color of Crips. "Well, not really..." I started.

They finished. "Webber wants to slap a ho?"

My protest was futile. The damage was done. My quote was removed from its context, forever. I’d branded myself as a wannabe pimp, or at least as a wannabe pimp/rapper/actor, no matter how much or how little I’d meant it. Everyone there in the office knew the truth: I envied Snoop’s facility with ho-slapping rhymes. Hell, we all knew it: I even envied Snoop. Sure, he’s rich, with a harem of groupies, but guys my age and temperament should worship better heroes. Like, say, Chris Kirkpatrick, for bringing obscurity back. Or maybe the Edge, because he’s named the Edge. And don’t forget Jesus, the leader of the Carpenters, the reason for the season of contract-fulfilling Christmas albums.

But no, I said it. And yes, I meant it: "I listen to Snoop for vicarious living."

Wistfully, mournfully, and most of all tragically: "I’m never gonna slap a ho."

And also this, which is probably worse, the sentence that preceded the aforementioned couplet:

"I liked Snoop better when he rapped about killing people."

Which means, via Snoop, I’m a pimp/accused murderer. Gleefully dangerous, armed and preposterous, I am the surprise in your cereal box. A children’s toy with lead-based paint. A choking hazard for kids without teeth.

Or at least I pretend, as I drive to my new office job, rapping along to Snoop Doggy Dogg. It wakes me up, like a cup of black coffee. It also makes me look like a dork. Especially when I gesticulate wildly. Or really, just when I breathe. Ya heard?

Deep inside, I know the truth. Despite how dope I’d like to be, my former coworkers think I’m a dope. And it’s 1-8-7 on their misreported slop. Despite my bravado, I know they’re right. I know I’m too ensconced in my bland, suburban lifestyle. I know I’m too timid to ever escape. I know I’m as lame as lameness itself, as wack as the author of To The Extreme. White, unoppressed, and respectful of authority, I’m pretty much Death Row’s target consumer. I know this. I accept this. I’ll never live it down. I’m about as scary as the nightlight in your bathroom.

And yet, this music still amuses me. Plainly and simply, this music entertains me. Despite or because of who I am. Despite or because of what I look like. Despite my lack of guns, and chronic, and any other entries from the gangsta-rap index, as found in the back of my gangsta-rap book, one of many projects on my to-be-written shelf.

Gangsta rap? I love that shit.

I realize it’s all just a silly, childish fantasy. Much of Snoop’s genre is nothing more than fiction, except for the songs that predicted Tupac’s death – except that Tupac remains alive, so all of his music thus remains fictional. Otherwise, the music is just a big show. At least that’s how I chose to listen to the stuff, the aural equivalent of The Godfather II, straight outta film and into my headphones.

Gangsta rap is harder than life.

My age and my background have surely played a part, as Doggystyle dropped in my freshman year of high school, and I heard it every day on the bus and in the hallways, from other people’s headphones and the mouths that rapped along. This music was the soundtrack to 1993, along with grunge rock and the massive Garth Brooks. All of these sounds, I love them today, whether or not I loved them then, especially when I’m feeling nostalgic. Impending reunions will do that to a guy. (Eleven years? We’re kinda slow.)

I listen to Snoop for vicarious living.

And just for the record, I’ll never slap a ho.

There’s no such drama in the MKE.

And funnily enough, when I dropped my witty gem, I didn’t even listen to Snoop Doggy Dogg.

This is the story of when I started listening.

II. Doggy Dogg World

People forget this, but Snoop Dogg was huge. Not as big as Garth Brooks’ hat, but much more engorged than Chris Cornell’s pipes. Sure, he’s still famous for coaching peewee football, and dropping lame verses on R&B remixes, and smoking weed, quitting weed, smoking weed, etc., but Doggystyle-era Snoop Dogg was everywhere. His verses on The Chronic were still blowing minds. His own hit videos, "Who Am I (What’s My Name)?" and "Gin and Juice," were looped on MTV and the backs of my eyelids. Like Elvis, he appeared to me in donut shops and burger joints, and anywhere else where kids my age wore headphones.

Wherever aspiring rappers were gathered, Snoop Dogg was there in voice and personality – or at least in the halls of McCluer Senior High School. The seniors wore shirts that read, "Comets in the Hizzouse!" a decade before "fo shizzle, my nizzle." Black kids and white kids were quoting "Deez Nuuuts." Ferguson, Missouri, was a suburb of Los Angeles, instead of St. Louis, the Gateway to the West Side. Or rather, the "West Siiide!!!" which we shouted as a greeting, complete with the accompanying "W" hand sign.

Snoop was unavoidable, like skin on nacho cheese. Like a whisper of a rumor at a table full of girls. Like a flying box of orange drink in a fistfight in the lunchroom. Seriously, kids, The Dogg was a superstar, the 50 Cent or Eminem of 1993, a rapper so hot he’d inevitably burn out, the rookie of the year in the prime of his potential. Back then, as he sang, "it’s a doggy dogg world."

See, ol’ Snoopy was bigger than Jesus. Bigger, even, than Kurt Cobain, whose lyrical gunplay inspired ugly T-shirts, instead of rap battles in chronic-scented bathrooms. He certainly was bigger than Beck or Billy Corgan, or name your favorite nineties icon. He even was bigger than Courtney Love’s body, before her grungy doll parts got faked beyond fake.

At least in my eyes, he was bigger, yes, than Biggie, at least at my school in suburban St. Louis.

The former Calvin Broadus, see, was even in the news, wanted in connection to a homicide. Golly!

My parents probably knew who he was!

Thus, to know him, I didn’t have to buy him. I only had to be alive.

And try as I might, I couldn’t block him out.

But that didn't mean I had to listen.

III. Serial Killa

People forget this intoxicating fact: Snoop Dogg was big because he was scary. In a genre of music that prizes being real, or at least seeming real enough in journalistic profiles, Snoop was a real-life gangsta, fo shizzle. His resume included time behind bars. His blue bandana promoted his gang. The most famous Crip in all of America, Snoop was a hero to wannabes everywhere.

And then he got entangled in an actual, real-life murder case.

Number one with a bullet, indeed.

I can’t call to mind the specifics of the case, only that Snoop and a member of his entourage were charged with the murder of one of their rivals. Eventually, the rapper was found not guilty, or free enough anyway to reclaim his life of rhyme. Sometime during the course of his trial, he rapped on MTV in a casket, I think – or was it a wheelchair? a hospital bed? – to better convey his murderous realness. (My memory now seems more vital than the truth, considering I’m dealing with fantasy here. But I fear Wikipedia will render me unreliable.) The negative publicity was priceless and awesome, as Snoop snarled his way into little kids’ living rooms, behind the backs of little kids’ parents, blurring the line between rapper and subject.

The name of this song was "Murder Was The Case." Most of my classmates devoured it up. But I was too grungy to do anything but scoff. "Snoop Doggy Dogg needs to get a jobby job," I joked, quoting a line from one of his videos. I wasn’t impressed by this unrepentant criminal, turning a profit from his gangsterrific crimes. Maybe if he sang, or played the guitar... Maybe if he sang about suicide instead of homicide... Maybe if he was, I don’t know, white...

Or maybe if I’d been a lot less close-minded. Maybe if I hadn’t been faking my own realness. Explaining my prejudice would take another essay, but back in the day, I hated gangsta rap, its sound, its fury, its seeming insignificance. The fact that it wasn’t grunge or classic rock, the only two genres I ever deigned to listen to. The fact that it was darker than the rap I’d liked in middle school, those songs about butts and busting a move.

See, Young MC was rap to me, not these so-called gangsta rappers. And even that guy with his clean raps, I hated, beyond all reason and rational debate. I hated those guys and their genre with a passion – in fact, with the passion with which I praise it now. As shocking as it is to the friends who know me now (props to the two of you visiting my website!), the friends who knew me then know the truth: In gangsta rap’s heyday, I didn’t want to hear it. The poppier stuff, I avoided more easily, considering it stopped getting played on the radio. But gangsta or pop or whatever kind of rap... Tupac, Coolio, it didn’t matter who... I despised all forms of rap. I hated, hated, hated the stuff – as much as I love, love, love it today (or at least its potential for wordplay and narrative, despite its reality often falling short). Rap wasn’t even music to me!

At least that what I told all the haters in my crew, equally pale-faced and pumpkin-smashing dangerous. Instead, we adored our suicidal singers, who’d shoot (up) themselves before shooting other people. We found Nirvana; we jammed with Eddie Vedder. All that shit, we devoured it instead. We played it on (air) guitar and transcribed it in our notebooks. We proudly rocked out like patriots and lumberjacks. When Dr. Dre came on, we quickly changed the channel. At least when our "band mates" were there to cheer us on. (My sophomore-year "band" featured seven guitarists, none of whom sang or wrote songs or could play.)

Only in retrospect were my friends and I copycats. Then, we were strangers in our strange St. Louis suburb. Then, we were fans of the Stone Temple Pilots. (I’ve never outgrown my favorite nineties band.) Then, we didn’t know any better. Then, we didn’t really know anything. We weren’t quite brainwashed, just susceptible to hype. Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Sponge, and other S bands? That was the shit we swallowed up whole.

Sure, these bands were equally manufactured, and equally marketed to children our age, a fact I didn’t realize till I’d aged a few more years, and gained the required critical distance. (Actually listening to rap also helped, in terms of my seeing it as something more than product, or at least as a product equivalent to grunge.) And sure, we shouted "West Siiide!!!" with everybody else. But that didn’t matter; we didn’t really mean it. Rap sounded fake to us; we didn’t really get it.

But songs about the death of the self or whatever? Songs called "Zero" and "Heart-Shaped Box"? God gave rock ‘n’ roll to us.

With grunge, we breathed its authenticity. With grunge, we bought the idea being sold. The fact that its lyrics were generally unintelligible? Well, that just gave us something to contemplate, and something to treasure in this one Nirvana single – "Lithium," I think – which actually came with a set of printed lyrics.

Kurt was way better than Snoop. We just knew it. There we were; he entertained us. He also inspired us to look up "mulatto." Before he even died, we admired his misanthropy. After he shot himself, we still thought he was cool. Can someone please tell me what stage of grief this is?

But we – or just me, as they’re not around to ask (I don’t mean they’re dead; they’re just back in St. Louis) – were actually scared of Snoop Doggy Dogg, or at least of the things his ascendance represented. His menacing voice. His violent perspective. The fact that his music was louder than ours, and much more effective at pissing off our parents. Someone our classmates aspired to be, dissing each other before and after school – and possibly, probably, dissing us nerds.

I hated this man, whom I didn’t understand. I feared the unknown, the world beyond grunge.

I’m getting to the part where these tidbits made me love him.

I realize my feelings seem goofy and ridiculous, as ludicrous as someone who’d sample Austin Powers. Really? I was scared of Snoop Doggy Dogg? A rapper named after the beagle in Peanuts? A rapper who’d later trade lines with Ben Stiller? A rapper whose hit songs now involve... tongue clicks? (The lip-smackin’, cheek-poppin’ "Drop It Like It’s Hot.") I wasn’t amused, or enthralled, or in denial, or at least not enough to be identified as such, at least not, again, until my collegiate reappraisal.

Yes, I was actually scared of The Dogg.

His casket-match performance unnerved me, disturbed me, as if he were the equally fictional The Undertaker, and I were the scrub in the monochromed underpants. (Monday Night Raw was a father/son ritual.) He gaffled me as no one had gaffled me before, gaffled to the point of, um, what’s it called, aphasia? Snoop was a dog in a yard without a fence, a barking, foaming Doberman whose chain could reach the sidewalk. Snoop was a killer straight outta "Jeremy," speaking in class in his hypnotic flow. Snoop was the goddamn "Man in the Box," coming to save us from a world without dick jokes.

Which is why I couldn’t fathom ever buying, or listening, to Doggystyle, suspecting I would scare myself by secretly, guiltily loving it.

And that’s what I did when I finally found it used, minus the secretive, guilty part. I first bought this album in 2007, fourteen long years after thinking it would scare me. And once I had it, I knew it: I loved it. It’s silly and dope and totally nineties. It’s far from being something to fear. Instead, it’s something to laugh at in private.

I love this album, and I don’t need to hide it, unless I’m around any ladies, I guess. No one is shocked by Snoop anymore, or by twenty-something office drones who revel in the fantasy. Amused, perhaps, but never shocked, once they get over laughing at me.

Doggystyle, see, is completely ridiculous.

As a work of art, nope, the album hasn’t aged well, or become less repulsive in the last decade-plus. If anything, it’s probably gotten worse. From the artwork on the cover to the skits throughout the album, gardening implements and female dogs abound. It’s way more offensive than scary or dangerous, more misogynistic than menacing or murderous. I’m old enough now to know I should hate it, and also to know that’s the reason why I love it. Explaining it further would only ruin the joke. Plus, I’m scared you’d all stop reading.

Believe me, friends, I’m laughing at myself.

But also believe me, I’m being deathly serious.

IV. Murder Was The Case

I’m writing three thousand words about Doggystyle, and yet they're not enough.

I actually started to write that essay, the one about me overcoming my prejudice, not against a race but against a style of music, my impassioned defense of a much-maligned genre, a "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hip-Hop" kind of thing, which mentioned C.S. Lewis even more than Eazy-E... My rap apologia, my academic diss track... The works cited page was perhaps my favorite part, seeing rappers’ real names followed by "et al." Plus, I used the word "nutz" a lot. Sorry.

Both of these projects have taken me a month. Maybe I’ll finish the other one... later. If so, you can read it for vicarious living, since you’re never gonna write about slapping a ho. You also can read about less cartoonish rappers. (Sadly, some of my friends think all rap sounds the same – violent, misogynistic, and otherwise offensive – and essays like this one won’t convince them otherwise. Unfortunately, my recent playing of "The $20 Sack Pyramid" from Dr. Dre’s The Chronic as a representative sample of rap skits further belabored the gunpoint.)

So why do I listen to Snoop Dogg again?

Comedy? Nostalgia? Atonement? Yes.

For capturing the zeitgeist in 1993? For scaring me then and entertaining me now? For giving my enemies fodder to mock me? For selling the drama of the LBC? For making the zenith of ho-slapping thug rap?

All of the above. But wait – there’s more!

The album cover and liner notes: The most vile piece of comic artwork since the original "alien-style" album cover of Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction!

Nancy Fletcher: The R&B hook girl with the least gangsta name of all time!!

RBX’s so-stupid-it’s-clever "pic-a-nic basket"/"pic-a-nic casket" couplet: What Yogi Bear would say before popping a cap in your scoutmaster’s ass!!!

And then there’s, stunningly, a work of real genius, Snoop Dogg’s masterpiece, "Murder Was The Case," the only song on Doggystyle that actually surprised me. Instead of cartoonish, it’s downright cinematic, a song with a plot and a tangible mise en scène. A song that mourns as much as it boasts. A song that may or may not be real – but sounds authentic, which is probably more important.

In short, this song is crazy good.

The rest of this album is by-the-book gangsta rap: Songs about murder, chronic, and dogs. Skits about ballz – and yes, slapping hoes. Stuff I heard so often in high school, I didn’t really need to hear it again. Shit I’ve heard on infinite albums, so I didn’t need another one to flaunt – or feign – my street cred. All of the tracks but this one are predictable, which makes my decade-plus boycott seem sensible.

If you’ve heard one Snoop song, you’ve truly heard them all. If you’ve heard one album by a better gangsta rapper, you never need to hear, much less buy, one by Snoop.

But "Murder Was The Case" deserves to be heard, by any devotees of rap, or just music. The beat is so sick it’s a deadly epidemic – especially that bell, that funereal bell, the one that tolls for thee and thine, an enemy rapper’s death knell, etc., as heard in Tupac’s "Hail Mary" et al. And don’t forget those high-pitched squeals, those squiggly synths or whatever they are, as heard in a million Death Row productions, possibly theremins, but who the hell knows?

Of course, there’s also that patented flow – before it became an out-of-tune instrument, a lazy reminder of battle-rap glories. This was when Snoop only rapped like he was singing, instead of actually singing for real. This was when his rapping voice still dripped with honey, equal parts menace and malice and cool. This was when he was still taken seriously, mostly for sounding so effortlessly gangsta. He wasn’t America’s Pimp just yet. At the time, he was more like America’s Dogg, equal parts lovable and foaming at the mouth. For just this one song, his voice was essential: necessary, yes, but also inherent, the very essence of gangsta rapping. So let’s just forget the raps that came later.

And Snoop’s best lyrics, concise and insightful... A song with three verses, a play in three acts... Snoop’s confession, Snoop’s remorse... Words of vengeance, but also of fear; words of defiance, but also of sorrow... Once they’re said, they can’t be retracted; once they’re heard, they can’t be forgotten. These lyrics are the crest of the rapper’s career; the "artwork" that followed is a shark-jumping parody. (See his careers as a professional pornographer, amateur linguist, and minor-league punchline: "Why does Snoop Dogg carry an umbrella?" "The drizzle, my nizzle!" Sampled drumroll, please!) These lyrics are the last time this artist had depth. The laughter that followed is something to mourn.

Act One: The song begins with Snoop left for dead, lying on his back and looking at the sky, as paramedics pump his chest. He cries, he prays, he starts to see demons, one of which offers to save him, for a price. If Snoop gives up his soul, he’ll live – in fact, with more money and power than before. Of course, our hero accepts these terms, closing his eyes and passing out. It’s not like there’s time to haggle or anything. The bell tolls on, the synths do their thing, and the hospital curtain parts for act two. We know ol’ Snoopy’s gonna be fine.

Act Two: Everything the demon promised came true. The doctors weren’t sure if Snoop would walk again, but Snoop more than walks – he Crip-walks! (It’s implied.) Back on his feet and back on the street, he sells more drugs and buys more cars and generally lives more gangsta than ever. It’s all pretty glamourous, especially to kids. But at what price? We start to wonder. Where’s the murder? Where’s the case? That’s how the narrator ratchets up the tension. He’s shown us mo’ money – so where’s mo’ problems? Somewhere, we know, the demon is laughing.

Act Three: Here’s where this rap song becomes a bitter tragedy. Here’s where this song by Snoop Doggy Dogg approaches a play by Shakespeare. No, really. As Shakespeare withholds a key murder in Macbeth, Snoop withholds the murder here. He also withholds the titular case. Law & Order: Long Beach this is not. Instead, he lets us imagine what happened – the murder and the case that they gave him, and so on. The action picks up with Snoop on a bus – not a Greyhound, not a crosstown, but one whose riders are wearing red jumpsuits. In other words, Snoop is going to jail, finally paying the price for his crimes. His good pal the demon is nowhere to be found; even his baby-mama has forsaken him. He’s taken to a high-security yard, where convicts get stabbed with pencils and toothbrushes. His deal with the demon has finally come due, as that’s where he’ll stay for twenty-five years. The story ends with a friend of Snoop’s dying, leaving us to wonder what will happen to The Dogg. We grip our pencils in rapt anticipation.

It’s scary and clever and worth buying once, especially for recession-proof, bargain-bin prices. That’s the Snoop Doggy Dogg I like, the only work of art of his I wish I'd bought much earlier. That’s the surprise in my cereal box, the masterpiece I wish I’d discovered in my youth, back in the day when I was dumbly anti-rap, those years I’m revising as much as I’m revisiting, whenever I bump this shit in my car. Despite or because of my inherent white dorkiness, I play it more often than I should, I know.

Today, I listen for vicarious living. I’m still not gonna slap a ho.

Absurdity was the case that they gave me.

Visit the author's website at matthewwebber.net.