Snoop Dogg Admitted He Was ‘Out-Gangstered’ By Dionne Warwick
California-bred rapper Snoop Dogg rose to prominence in the early 1990s in the wake of gangsta rap pioneers such as N.W.A., and Snoop soon became one of the genre’s leading faces himself alongside artists like Tupac Shakur. The content of his lyrics attracted many listeners, but it also attracted critics — including Grammy-winning singer Dionne Warwick.
Dionne Warwick called a special morning meeting with Snoop Dogg and other artists
Snoop Dogg appeared in the 2023 CNN documentary Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over to discuss the in-person meeting he had with Warwick to discuss the lyrical content of his music. Snoop and Warwick recounted a now-infamous meeting where she invited prominent hip-hop figures including Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur at her home at 7 a.m. sharp. “These kids are expressing themselves, which they’re entitled to do. However, there’s a way to do it,” Warwick explained in the documentary about her thought process calling the meeting.
Snoop and the rest of his crew arrived in Warwick’s drive at 6:52 a.m. “We were kind of like scared and shook up,” the “Gin & Juice” rapper recalled. “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.”
“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,” Warwick said of the meeting in a 2022 appearance on The Real. “I was giving them a spanking, and they wanted to know what I was giving them a spanking about.”
Ultimately, Warwick said in her documentary that because of her age, she wanted to help Snoop, Tupac, and others to think of the future when they would have their own families to answer to. “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.
Dionne Warwick ‘out-gangstered’ Snoop Dogg
In the end, Snoop realized that Ms. Warwick might have had a point.
“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 later added. “I hope I’m making you proud.”
Snoop Dogg’s career after his meeting with Dionne Warwick
While Snoop didn’t shy away from non-family-friendly rap in the following years after his meeting with Warwick, he would later create music that she might consider more positive.
In 2018, Snoop released his first-ever Gospel album, Bible of Love. And in 2022, he launched Doggyland, an animated TV series featuring kid-friendly nursery rhymes.
