What isn’t Snoop Dogg known for?
The man we love to call Snoop is undoubtedly the godfather of rap. He’s also a lyricist, singer, actor, businessman, cannabis entrepreneur, and media influencer. For thirty years, he’s stayed on top of a game that spits rappers out on the rip.
Earlier this year, Snoop was all over the media. He’d announced launching an effort to legalize marijuana on the national level with billionaire and right-wing activist Charles Koch.
But the one thing most known about Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr., is his appreciation of weed. He publicly and boldly embraced weed long before legalization was on any government table. (One of his most successful tours was Puff Puff Pass.)
The multi-hyphenate Snoop recently sat with The Hollywood Reporter to talk cannabis. The artist had on his mind a clear vision of who should and should not benefit from the boom in legalized cannabis.
He’s acutely aware there’s serious inequity in the industry right now. Only five percent of legal cannabis businesses are currently owned and operated by BIPOCs. These entrepreneurs struggle against adversity as weed cultivation and sales remain illegal on the federal level.
Snoop believes as the industry grows, this will change. “I think that” [the money is] “going to actually trickle down into the right hands — and what I mean by right hands, I mean the people who deserve to get paid off of this, not the people just trying to get paid off of it.”
The communities who were there before legalization, Snoop argues, should get theirs. Right now in the world of legalized cannabis, it’s the people with the most money getting the best opportunities. Snoop is putting his voice behind turning that contradiction around.
“People are starting to understand what’s going on… We feel like hip-hop and the culture in general, from jazz music to right now, has helped cannabis become most infamous for what it is. Willie Nelson, Cheech & Chong, Snoop Dogg, look at the cultures that are connected to these people that I just named and how they bring the whole world together and who they are. Their people should be the ones who should benefit from this, not the big billionaire companies that come in and buy up all the licenses and then make us slave for them for something that we created…”
It’s much in the way blacks revolutionized music, but only the corporations’ pockets got deeper. Snoop sees the current state of the cannabis industry in the same way.
But today’s monopolization of the cannabis market will end. Just as we saw the death of music contracts that ensured black artists got only pennies from the millions their work produced, our communities will have their day.
For Snoop, advocating for change isn’t a political play. Through ventures like his partnership with Koch, he’s speaking and defending those who cannot. “From the first time you heard me on a song, that’s all I’ve been pushing. … it’s my job to speak for them.”
