snoop dogg

I have never had much patience for people who dismiss hip-hop as being only about gangstas, bitches and hos, or people who like poetry (especially slam poetry) but don’t extend the same regard or respect to rap. It smacks of ignorance and laziness, like someone picking up A Clockwork Orange and concluding it sucks within the first few pages because they don’t get all the weird language about droogs and devotchkas.

Snoop Dogg has always been a problem for my campaign, not least when I was still in London, listening to Still Dre in my room in the Catholic hall and the elderly nun who ran the place knocked on the door to discuss something with me – during a perfectly timed lull in the conversation while I was standing in the doorway talking to her, my speakers loudly proclaimed “It’s the motherfuckin’ D O double G / Snoop Dogg, mothaFUCKAS!!!” Still, despite myself I rather enjoyed this interview (Emma Forrest) in The Guardian. Excerpt:

I have worn scuffed Converse, boy jeans and a T-shirt to this interview because I didn’t want Snoop to look at me sexually. And yet I find myself asking the next question, when the publicist pops her head in to say “two more minutes”. I stare at him, staring at himself and it comes out like Tourette’s.

“What would be my market value, if you were still pimping?”

Snoop looks up, with interest, for the very first time. He looks at my face, my hair. He appears to do a sum in his head.

“Stand up real quick, let me see.”

And I do.

“Oh! You built nice! You built like a black girl! You been sitting on a fortune. You need the right person to represent you, get the connection. You could be in the $4,000 range.”

Snoop was right. Us Jews do have all the money. All the time I had been wondering where mine was, when it was right behind me.