THE MARRIAGE OF
HIP-HOP AND PORNOGRAPHY

THE MARRIAGE OF HIP-HOP AND PORNOGRAPHY

Entertainment reporter Geoff Boucher wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “You might be able to imagine Garth Brooks without his cowboy hat or Britney Spears without the bare midriff... but Snoop Dogg without a joint in his hand? It may be a pipe dream, but the chronic king of hip-hop has announced that he is abstaining from marijuana as well as alcohol.

“This is shocking news considering that Snoop was named the 2002 Stoner of the Year by High Times magazine and has made a habit of openly toking before, during and after his concerts and interviews. He has been, arguably, the most public pothead performer since Bob Marley.”

The rapper explained in an interview on BET: “I’m 30 years old now. Three kids. A wife. A mom. Brothers. Artists. Family. Friends. They all need me. They depend on me. I’ve been leading [home boys] off the cliff for five, six years. So now I’m going slow.”

However, then-High Times entertainment editor Steve Bloom considered the possibility that Snoop’s surprise declaration was not necessarily a true change of heart, since he had been fined and placed on probation for a pot offense in Ohio the previous year.

“He was the biggest, baddest pot smoker out there,” says Bloom (now editor of the online website Celeb Stoner), “and maybe he’s just stepping back because it got too hot. Maybe he really has decided he wants to take a break or not smoke any more. But all this could be a smokescreen.”

Sort of like when Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, both of whom, after they were busted for dope, advised young people to stop taking LSD (wink, wink).

Indeed, Rollingstone.com has reported: “In a closed-door session at the Department of Justice, Snoop Dogg engaged the attorney general in a spirited debate about medical marijuana. ‘The Doggfather and I have our differences,’ an unusually expansive [Attorney General] John Ashcroft told reporters afterward, ‘but we are both committed to relieving chronic pain.’ ‘Or at a mutherfuckin’ minimum,’ rejoined Dogg, ‘relievin’ with the Chronic.’”

In any case, on the Internet, Snoop’s fans reacted to his announcement with both dismay and skepticism. The news also inspired commentary in Aaron McGruder’s controversial comic strip, The Boondocks. Huey Freeman, the radical African-American kid, says, referring to Snoop’s announcement, “It’s the potential impact on the global economy that I’m worried about,” and his little neighbor Jazmine responds, “Think he’ll do a benefit song for his dealer?” 

Dogg seems to have a double standard, though, when it comes to victimless “crimes.” Whereas his flamboyant image once graced a cover of High Times, he now appears instead, seated on a throne, in full pimp regalia, on the cover of the September 2002 issue of Adult Video News. Their accompanying article states:

“While Snoop Dogg wasn’t the first rapper to make porn—DJ Yella of N.W.A. has been producing it since the mid-1990s—Doggystyle, more than any other porn/hip-hop synthesis, awakened the adult industry to the immense commercial possibilities of the genre. The tape, Snoop’s first collaboration with Hustler Video, in which he introduces the sex scenes but doesn’t have sex on camera, has sold more than 150,000 units world-wide, garnering AVN’s Top Selling Tape of 2001 Award... Largely due to the success of Doggystyle, more and more rappers are appearing in porn videos with no fear of alienating fans.”

Snoop believes that the hip-hop/porn connection benefits both industries. “The adult video world is so much what rap music is all about,” he says in Adult Video News, “about expressing ourselves and having fun, and a lot of times radio and TV don’t understand that so they censor us. So I feel like we’re doing each other justice by being hand in hand and working with each other. I mean, a lot of people be in the closet about it, but they all listen to rap music or watch adult videos one way or another.

“I always wanted to do it because I felt like I had a lot of records that would never get no airplay or never get no visuals, and I just wanted to make some type of video where I could do these songs and have naked ladies in them and doing that type of shit. And then when I figured out that I could make a whole movie, I got with the right director and then put my ideas down and made it happen.”

Speaking of his follow-up to Doggystyle, titled HUSTLAZ, Diary of a Pimp, he expounds, “It’s just basically the day in the life of a pimp, everything he’s got going on with all the ladies in different rooms in the house and different situations that occur. And videos. So it’s just like a live, put-together movie. It’s a diary. It’s like a documentary in movie fashion. We made three new records [‘Break These Hoes for Snoop,’ ‘Doin’ It Too’ and ‘Pussy Like This’] that were just specifically for this, where we could make records that was hot and we knew they were X rated and they would fit the movie, fit the theme. This shit is hot, when it’s all side by side, the videos and the acting and the music all comes together.”

Apparently, Snoop Dogg’s family—those three kids, his wife and his mother—are all completely supportive of his current activity. And so he maintains a hard-on all the way to the bank. Snoop’s new public agenda can be summed up in four little words: “Porn, si. Pot, no.”