Touré hung out with Snoop Dogg at his unassuming ranch house in southern California. As his children played nearby, Snoop seemed like a dedicated family man, and he was. He had constructed a whole youth football league for his sons and kids throughout the area. But not long before this chapter of his life, Snoop said, he had been a pimp. He talked about how he got into the life, controlled women, and went to a player’s ball, a virtual pimp convention. But what did his wife say while all this was happening, and why did she take him back when he was through? Snoop said because long ago, the biggest pimp in Long Beach was her own daddy…
Full transcript below.
SNOOP tGSS 003 FINAL Audio Only.mp3
Announcer [00:00:00] You are now listening to theGrio’s Black Podcast Network, Black Culture Amplified.
Toure [00:00:05] I’m Toure. Star Stories is brought to you by theGrio Black Podcast Network, home of the Blackest Questions with Dr. Chrissy Greer and Dear Culture with Panama Jackson. This episode of Star Stories is about Snoop Dogg. The year 2006, and Snoop Dogg is one of America’s biggest stars, respected by gangsters and all those who love them and beloved by suburban moms because he seems cute, cuddly, charismatic. Part of that mainstream love comes from him seeming like a nice guy in a fun weed head and a family man. When I got to spend a day with Snoop, I saw the family man and the other side of Snoop too. Back when I was writing about rappers for magazines, the phone would ring, and sometimes they’d say good at Trump Tower and interview Jay-Z or get on a plane and go to Cannes and interview Beyonce or fly to L.A. and hang out with DMX. This is about my day with Snoop Dogg, a.k.a. Rappers get Midlife Crises like all Middle- age Men”, but they handle it way differently. So buss it. I’m in sunny Pomona, California, on a big green field, watching a football team practice in full pads, even though the players are like nine and ten years old. It’s the cutest thing ever. Snoop was then the head coach of the Pomona Steelers in the Snoop Youth Football League, and he was serious about all this. He talked to his players about the minutia of technique, about tactics, everything. He started the Snoop Youth Football League a year earlier to give 2,000 kids the opportunity to play football in a league made just for them. It was also a chance for Snoop to hang out with his kids. Both of his sons were in the football league, and his youngest, his daughter, was a cheerleader. Now, Snoop treated all the kids on his team like they were his. He was encouraging and loving and gentle and sweet. Out on that field, he seemed like the ultimate suburban family man in the community, working with the kids and having a great time. Snoop told me he loves these kids so much he stopped smoking weed during their season so he wouldn’t smell funny when he showed up at practice. Now that’s what I call putting family first. After football practice, Snoop drove up the freeway in his two-seat Porsche Carrera, doing 90 while steering with his knees because he was using his hands to roll a blunt as he was driving. Yes, I was nervous. He was speeding while steering with his knees. He never missed a turn, but still. Then he pulled up to his home. A two-level ranch house with a white fence that screamed family man. The exterior was giving heavy Brady Bunch vibes. Nothing about it said Rap star lives here. It was a super family man home. And then we went inside, and we walked past the living room, which had once belonged to Snoop. But he had somehow lost the room to his kids. They outnumbered him, and he begrudgingly accepted the defeat. He sighed as he looked into the room and saw the kids all over the couch, and said, “This used to be mine.” In that moment. he seemed like so many middle-aged dads who compromise with their kids because they’re good dads, but because he Snoop, there’s more in the backyard. There’s a man-sized wooden doghouse like a man cave playhouse. It had one room, and in that one room was one TV, smaller than the one in the living room, and one couch, also smaller than the one in the living room. Just big enough to seat two grown men. So me and Snoop sat knee to knee watching the TV, and we watched footage of the little football team that they were going to play next week. He had already hyper-analyzed their star running back’s tendencies and was now breaking down the child’s football style to me in detail, that would have made Bill Belichick think about hiring Snoop to coach defense. I mean, we’re sitting there talking about the intricacies of peewee football. It was beautiful. His love for football and for his kids was intertwined in this thing. We were in peak family man vibe. There was one thing in that room that kept calling out to me. There was only one image on the walls, and it sat right over the couch. A large framed photograph of Snoop at a party in a mink beside Diddy in a mink. And in the middle of the two of them was another man in a mink. He was much shorter and much older than them but devilishly stylish. The photo seemed important. It was in the room in a space of reverence above the couch. But I didn’t know why. I vibe that the Snoop, the other man was the star of the photo. But who was he? I said to Snoop. “Who’s the other guy?” Snoop said, “That’s my father-in-law.” In the seventies, he was one of the biggest pimps in Long Beach. Oh. I started to understand, but not really. He was family with a major pimp. And while lots of rappers talked about pimpin’ as a sort of analogy, now I’m saying with Snoop not being symbolic when he talked about pimping. I recalled a rather bizarre moment from a few years earlier where Snoop showed up to an awards show with two women on leashes. Of course, he was holding the handle, and at the time, I thought they were actresses just playing along, creating awards show hype. But now I’m like, Wait a minute. Well. So I asked him, what was that? And he said, Oh, it’s just flexing my pimp muscle and letting people see how real pimps do it. It really was pimpin’. He said it really was pimpin’ with so much feeling that I couldn’t help but think he was saying that he was then a professional pimp. So I asked him, and he said, Yeah, for about two years in the early 2000s from about 2002 until 2004, he was a professional pimp. He said I wouldn’t even say a real pimp. I’d just say I had it like that. At that point, I didn’t even know what. So I just sat back and listened to his story.
Announcer [00:06:48] Thank you for listening to Star Stories with Toure. If you like the show, you’ll love the animated version of the series. Watch the adult cartoon series Star Stories with Toure at theGrio.com or the Grio Black Podcast Network’s YouTube channel. You’ll find the video links in the description section of this episode.
Toure [00:07:05] He said. I wouldn’t even say a real pimp. I’d just say I had it like that. At that point, I didn’t even know what, so I just sat back and listened to his story, he said. See, Pimpin was my natural calling, and once I got involved with it, it became fun. It was like shooting lay-ups for me. I was making them every time because pimpin’ ain’t a job. It’s a sport. I had a girl on every exit from the ten freeway to the 101 Freeway because they would recruit for me. That’s pimping. He said I wasn’t a gorilla pimp where I was beating the girls up. Never laid a hand on them. I was more finesse with it, just giving them a comfort zone and providing them with opportunities. A little later, Snoop met the Bishop Don Magic Juan, a pimp in Chicago for more than three decades. They became friends, and the Bishop led Snoop even deeper into the world of pimpin’. He was still out Cripping sometimes; Snoop said, I’m not going to say I was putting in work, but I was into a lot of stupid gangbanging stuff. I would go do stuff. This was at a time when he was already a very well-known rapper and actor. But then Snoop said, Bishop would say, Let’s go get your hair did. Let’s go to the player’s ball. Let’s go to Chicago to do this pimp thing. Stuff that I had never seen before. Get into all that may have saved my life not long before I did this interview with Snoop. I had gotten married so well. I was there in the clubhouse with Snoop. I did think, how is it your wife accepted this? Because I knew my wife would be extremely upset if I came home and told her stories about my day pimping girls. Snoop said at first, his wife tolerated it. He said she was used to the life because of her father, but he said she wasn’t accepting. She was just looking the other way because I never did it in her face. I was never bringing the girls to the house. But at some point she stopped looking the other way. And in early 2004, they filed for divorce. That’s when Snoop went heavy into the pimp life. He said I was going to all the players’ balls. He took 12 with them to a player’s ball that year, and then weeks later, at a ball in Detroit, Snoop won The Bishop Don Magic Juan Lifetime Achievement Award. But a few months after filing for divorce, some of Snoop’s pimp friends told him, Yo, the party’s over. Go back home to your wife. And he did. And they reconciled. And in late 2004, the divorce proceedings ended. They stayed married, but after that, their marriage was never quite the same, he said. Snoop said before all that I would never listen to her. It was like everything I say is the law. But on the comeback, I’m more of an ear instead of a mouth. Sometimes it irritates me to hear her talk to me like that. But when the relationship is right, that’s the way it’s supposed to feel. Snoop says he was far from a perfect husband, but he left him behind because he cared about his family and didn’t want to lose them. It’s one thing to go to the circus for a day, but the man who had run away from his family to join the circus, that man is crazy. Snoop put it like this. If you dream of riding the Colossus at Magic Mountain and you get a chance to ride it, you’re going to get on it. And I did that, and I needed to do it. But I love my family, and I’m in this now. From the looks of things, family is what Snoop will be all about for a long time.
Toure [00:10:53] Star Stories is brought to you by theGrio Black Podcast Network, home of The Grio Daily with Michael Harriot and Writing Black with Maiysha Kai. If you like this Star Stories episode, check out the one on Kanye. Remember to rate and review. It really matters. Thanks for listening. I’m Toure.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:11:14] I’m political scientist, author, and professor Dr. Christina Greer, and I’m the host of The Black Blackest Questions on the Grio’s Black Podcast Network. This person invented ranch dressing around 1950. Who are they?
Guest Marc Lamont Hill [00:11:28] I have no idea.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:11:29] This all began as an exclusive Black history trivia party at my home in Harlem with family and friends. And they got so popular it seemed only right to share the fun with our Grio listeners. Each week, we invite a familiar face on the podcast to play. What was the name of the person who was an enslaved chief cook for George Washington and later ran away to freedom?
Guest Roy Wood, Jr. [00:11:51] No, this is why I like doing stuff with you because I leave educated. I was not taught this in Alabama public schools.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:11:58] Question number three. You ready?
Guest Eboni K Williams [00:11:59] Yes. I want to redeem myself.
Guest Amanda Seales [00:12:01] How do we go from Kwanzaa to like these obscure? This is like the New York Times crossword from Monday to Saturday.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:11] Right or wrong. All we care about is the journey and having some fun while we do it.
Guest Kalen Allen [00:12:16] I’m excited. And also a little nervous.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:18] Oh, listen—no need to be nervous. And as I tell all of my guests, this is an opportunity for us to educate ourselves because black history is American history.
Guest Eboni K Williams [00:12:27] Latoya Cantrell.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:29] That’s right. Mayor Latoya Cantrell.
Guest Michael Twitty [00:12:31] Hercules Posey.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:32] Hmm. Born in 1754 and he was a member of the Mount Vernon slave community, widely admired for his culinary skills.
Guest Kalen Allen [00:12:39] I’m going to guess Afro-punk
Dr. Christina Greer [00:12:42] Close, it’s Afro Nation. So let’s see. According to my research and Samuel Wilson, a.k.a. Falcon.
Guest Jason Johnson [00:12:51] Wrong Wrong. I am disputing this.
Guest Roy Wood, Jr. [00:12:55] I just don’t know nothing today. I am going to pour myself a little water while you tell me the answer.
Dr. Christina Greer [00:13:00] The answer is Seneca Village, which began in 1825 with the purchase of land by a trustee of the A.M.E. Zion Church. So give us a follow, subscribe, and join us on the Blackest Questions.
