Snoop Dogg is a national treasure in the rap community. If that fact hasn’t occurred to everyone prior to now, let his latest story about his first encounter with Tupac be the evidence needed as proof. It’s a tale that involves battle rapping and blunts.
The reveal comes in a preview clip taken from an upcoming episode on GGN Network where Snoop plays host to Demetrius Shipp, the actor tasked with portraying Tupac in the new biopic, All Eyez On Me. The two are talking about how Snoop being on Death Row was one of the reasons the late rapper joined the label. But, according to Snoop, their friendship extended well before that after having meet at the wrap party for Poetic Justice, the 1993 flick starring ‘Pac and Janet Jackson. As Snoop remembers it, they were in a backstage area when a DJ started spinning and Pac set things off from there.
“Tupac grabbed the mic, he started rapping,” Snoop said. “I grabbed the mic, I started rapping. But I’m rapping aggressive, because at this time, I’m one of them, like battle rappers. So I’m aggressive. So he come back, he aggressive. It sound like we kinda like battling each other.”
He continued, “It was like we get off to like a wrong start, but you could tell we both dope as a motherf*cker, so it’s like we not really gonna go there.”
After their verbal sparring ended, the two later met up and ended up taking a marijuana break. “When we finish rapping, we go outside,” he said. “I’m like, ‘My name’s Snoop.’ He like, ‘My name Pac.’ He break up with a blunt and that nigga roll a blunt with me. That’s my first time ever hitting a blunt.”
Now, imagine a couple of things real quick:
1. Snoop and weed are synonymous with each other. As a Californian, his weed was most likely only consumed with rollings papers since blunts were more of an east coast thing around that time. But, it’s still hard to think of him not having smoked weed in every way imaginable. He’s made up for lost time, but still.
2. Think of being lucky enough to say you witnessed a young, tall and gangly Snoop D-O-double-G rapping his hardest against much smaller, but every bit as aggressive Tupac. If that happened in 2017, there would be countless Snaps and IG stories to document it. But in the early ’90s, people weren’t obsessed with documenting their every waking moment so footage of the battle probably doesn’t exist.
Thankfully, we have Snoop here to make sure the story survives via oral tradition.
