Snoop Dogg has revealed that a meeting with legendary singer Dionne Warwick early in his career forever changed the the type of music he created.
The rapper appeared in Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over, a new CNN Film dedicated to the singer’s illustrious career that premiered on Sunday (January 1). In one scene, Snoop and Warwick revisited the time when she hosted a meeting at her home to call Hip Hop to task over its rampant misogyny.
According to CNN, Dionne Warwick invited Snoop Dogg, Suge Knight and others over for a 7:00 a.m. meeting. The reason behind the meeting was simple: “These kids are expressing themselves, which they’re entitled to do. However, there’s a way to do it,” she explained in the film.
Afraid of angering their host, Snoop and his crew arrived in Warwick’s driveway at 6:52 a.m.
“We were kind of like scared and shook up,” the Doggfather 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.”
Once he and the others entered, Dionne Warwick wasted no time addressing her concerns by asking them to call her a bitch, as they seemed so comfortable doing on their songs.
“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?”
The “Beautiful” rapper said that her feedback definitely made an impact on the type of music he created from that point on.
“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 Dogg added later in his interview. “I hope I’m making you proud.”
The change in creative direction did not stop Snoop Dogg from becoming and remaining one of the most respected figures in so-called gangster Rap.
But in addition to intentionally putting a more positive spin on his Hip Hop output, the West Coast mainstay has also delved into other genres in music, including releasing a Gospel album titled Bible Of Love in 2018.
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