Snoop Dogg On Cordae Writing For Him: ‘It’s About What I Can’t See’
Snoop Dogg has explained in a new interview why he’s happy to let other people write for him at this stage in his career.
Tha Doggfather’s most recent project, BODR, features a number of different artists including rising stars Jane Handcock, HeyDeon and Nefertitti Avani. But more than just guest artists, he also had Cordae write for him on the song “We Don’t Gotta Worry No More.”
Promoting his new Netflix film Day Shift alongside Jamie Foxx, Snoop stopped by the Rap Radar Podcast and talked about why he’s okay with people penning his raps, even though it’s long been considered a taboo thing to do in Hip Hop.
“I started off writing,” Snoop told B.Dot. “I started off writing for Dr. Dre, so what would I be if I didn’t allow somebody to write for me? Sometimes you gotta put yourself in the frame of letting somebody else depict a better picture for you because you can’t see everything.”
Snoop went on to give an example of another artist’s best work that was written by someone else: “I feel like Whitney Houston’s best record was The Bodyguard, when the other people came in and gave her records that weren’t hers, where she could just sit back and just sing and they embodied what they thought she should be.”
“That’s to the point in my career where I’m at now, where I’ve written so many hit records,” he continued. “It’s not about what I can write sometimes, it’s about what I can’t see that somebody else can write for me.”
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In a previous interview, Snoop explained how Cordae came to write the track for him. “Terrace Martin came here one day with Cordae,” the Death Row legend told Tidal. “Cordae is like, ‘Let me write something to this for you.’ I’m like, ‘Go ahead, homie.’ He go in that muthafuckin’ booth and wrote all of the rap — the first verse and the second verse!
“The beauty of that is, he wrote some lyrics about my mama. My mama was in great health when he wrote that, but by the time we put that out, my mama passed away.”
Snoop then proceeded to highlight the lyrics: “I shed a tear as I stare in my mom’s eyes/ Yeah I prophesized it and I manifested/ Yeah my pockets was skinny, yeah they was anorexic/ Yeah I beat a murder case and made your favorite records/ Let me say this message.”
He added: “Ain’t that crazy? How that young man could write that for me.”
Meanwhile, Snoop Dogg has launched a brand new animated kids series called Doggyland.
The show — formally titled Doggyland – Kids Songs & Nursery Rhymes — sees the Death Row rapper partner with Emmy-nominated creator of kids’ franchise Hip Hop Harry, and frequent collaborator October London.
Available to watch on YouTube, Doggyland is led by a cast of cartoon dogs — Bow Wizzle (voiced by Snoop), Wags, Yap Yap, Chow Wow and Barks-A-Locks — and helps “promote social emotional development as well as age related cognitive development” in pre-school children.
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