A Choir Boy, the Crips & a Cartoon Puppy
As the auditorium quieted, Calvin began playing a new gospel hymn on the piano. His biggest fan winked at him from the front pew of Golgotha Trinity Baptist Church where he honed his musical talent as a choir boy and pianist.
His mother and first musical influence whispered, “Smile Snoopy.” This became her nickname for him because he resembled the puppy, Peanuts, from Charlie Brown.
Calvin grew up on the fringes of L.A.'s South Bay, helping his single mom support their family by selling sweets and delivering newspapers in the 80’s. He was a good kid with good grades. He began experimenting with rap & hip-hop by age 11, growing into a talented musician and a star athlete by high school.
After graduating with a 4.0 GPA, recognition for achievements in football and basketball and division 1 offers, Calvin was arrested. What began as a new group of friends, ended in an accidental affiliation with The Crips.
He spent the next three years in and out of prison. Calvin began writing and rapping about his experiences and recorded some of his music while he was locked up. He and his cousins recorded homemade tapes, calling their group ‘213’.
Calvin had an epiphany after one of the visits with his mother in prison:
“I could sense somebody, or something, sharing that space with me… I didn’t hear a voice… But I sure enough realized… that no matter what had come before, no matter what I’d done wrong… I still had a chance… I could make a difference in my life… Do I want to keep coming back to this place, or do I want to elevate myself and make my mother proud of me?”
He returned to his cell that afternoon to find a message from his P.D. with a plea deal. Calvin decided he was more than the sum of a few mistakes. He was Snoopy – his mother’s son.
Within a year of his release, one of his homemade tapes reached the ears of the rapper and producer Dr. Dre. Calvin dropped a debut album a few months later. It climbed its way to the No. 1 spot on Billboard's hip-hop and Top 200 charts with the 1993 single –
Who Am I (What's My Name)?
We know Calvin by his stage name, a version of the endearing nickname his mother gave him –
SNOOP DOGG.
Three decades later, Snoop Dogg owns the label he first signed with: Death Row Records. He is a pioneer in rap, an enter-tainment mogul, and one of the world’s most beloved pop culture icons. His 30 year career includes 16 Grammy nom-inations, 35 million albums sold worldwide and 175 singles.
Snoop Dogg founded the non-profit SYFL to help inner-city kids between the ages of 5 and 13 sharpen their skills on the field, while also emphasizing academics.
Snoop once explained –
“People don’t understand gangster rap comes from gospel music. 95 percent of the gangster rappers were born and raised in a church.” “This is where we learned how to perform. We learned how to act,” he said. “We learned how to conduct ourselves. We learned how to articulate, we learned how to read. We learned how to do all the things we do now as professionals in rap.”
His dear mother was Evangelist Beverly Broadus Green and she remained his biggest fan for life.
Introduce your kids to Snoop Dogg and other icons in the illustrated children’s book BLACK MUSIC GREATS: 40 INSPIRING ICONS.
“In every rap I ever recorded, in the mad flow of every street-corner freestyle I ever represented, there was only one thing I wanted to get across: the way that it is. Not the way I might want it to be. Not the way I think YOU might want it to be. But the way it REALLY is, on the streets of the ‘hoods of America, where life is lived out one day at a time, up against it, with no guarantees.”
— SNOOP DOGG
