News I by I 15.03.17

Fact-checking President Trump: Is Snoop Dogg’s career really failing?

When Donald Trump gets tweet-happy, political reporters are tasked with fact-checking the President’s incendiary 140-character missives. But when Trump takes aim at a pop culture figure, that’s one for us. After calling the career of legendary Long Beach rapper Snoop Dogg “failing”, we looked at the stats to determine just exactly how much Snoop is still winning.

The video for Snoop Dogg and BadBadNotGood’s Kaytranada-produced anti-police brutality track ‘Lavender’ is full of parody. Crude clowns abound throughout the clip, including one poking fun at President Donald Trump. As one can tell from his outrage over Alec Baldwin’s recurring impression of Trump on Saturday Night Live, he doesn’t take too kindly to people using their big platforms to mock him. The addition of Snoop using an Adam West-Batman-style pistol to “assassinate” the Trump clown in the video, no doubt, only enraged The Donald more.

How do we know this? Well, while most government officials in such high offices would not have such a minuscule pop culture moment on their radar, Trump made it known via Twitter that not only had he seen the video, but that he is pissed.

Trump has a track record for hopping on Twitter to degrade the success of a celebrity who’s disparaged him – just ask the “most overrated actress in Hollywood” Meryl Streep. But as with most things The Donald expresses in 140 characters, the truth of those claims are usually pretty questionable. Getting out of the way that Snoop and his collaborators BadBadNotGood and Kaytranada are protected by the First Amendment to make a video like ‘Lavender’ – and that plenty of people have made egregiously violent representations of President Obama without “jail time!” – FACT felt it prudent to add this Trump tweet to the list of many that need to be fact-checked.

So, is Snoop Dogg’s career failing? Let’s look at some of his recent accomplishments – and missteps.


He elevated the Canadian weed industry after releasing his Leafs by Snoop strains.

Back in October 2016, Bloomberg reported that the launch of Uncle Snoop’s own cannabis line helped to catapult marijuana stock across Canada. And, his consulting with popular cannabis brands in the UK and Germany, including the largest CBD manufacturer in the UK – Blessed CBD – has not gone unnoticed either. It’s landed him shares and partnerships in the cannabis space, as well as additional consulting roles that have net him millions.

The announcement that his Leafs by Snoop range was to be unveiled by Tweed, a subsidy of major marijuana grower Canopy Growth Corp. – they’re the first cannabis company to trade on a major North American stock exchange – raised the company’s stock by 17% (a record, at the time) and had a positive effect on other growers in the country, as well. According to Bloomberg, Vancouver-based Aurora Cannabis went up 22% then, as well.

Tweed president Mark Zekulin called Snoop “one of the most trusted voices in cannabis the world over” and said, “We’re welcoming a cannabis culture icon into the Canadian industry.” Since then, Snoop’s home state California voted to fully legalize marijuana for recreational use. No doubt the influence he’s had over weed culture in America since the release of Doggystyle in 1993 will continue to grow.


His late night cooking show with Martha Stewart, Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, was renewed for a second season before the first even ended.

VH1’s Potluck Dinner Party is one of the oddest half hours on television. Stewart and Snoop have been pals since he appeared on a 2008 episode of Martha to prepare Thanksgiving mashed potatoes, but what happens on Potluck Dinner Party is peak late-2010s culture-jamming. Their guests range from Wiz Khalifa and Ice Cube to Kathy Griffin and Ashlee Simpson. (Oh, and Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto.)

The variety show can both help with your culinary chops and features live performances from FACT faves like Anderson .Paak and Fat Joe and Remy Ma. That hybrid is so indelible, the show was renewed long before the first season even ended.


However, the MTV sitcom Mary + Jane he executive produced was canceled after one season.

Featuring two friends, Paige and Jordan, who are working to improve the weed delivery service model, Mary + Jane ended up being more like a lukewarm mash-up of Broad City and Weeds. Even though the show was unsuccessful and canceled after one season, Snoop still understands that female friendship is one of the cornerstones of great sitcoms.

And in 2017, as the taboos about girls and grass continues to be smashed, he continues to stay on the right side of history.


But he did appear on one of the most popular episodes of The Simpsons in recent memory.

Say what you will about The Simpsons in current day, there is still cultural cache to getting to guest star. Snoop appeared on the show alongside Hidden Figures and Empire star Taraji P. Henson, RZA, Common and Keegan-Michael Key in the series’ first-ever hour-long episode, a rap-themed epic called ‘The Great Phatsby’.

Listen, we get that “rap-theme, super-sized edition of The Simpsons” is not must-see TV by 2017’s standards, but the episode was well-reviewed and given even more credibility for including a vet such as Snoop Dogg.


He is still selling records – just look at last year’s Coolaid.

Snoop has over two decades in the game, but he is still peaking in the top 50 on the Billboard 200. He most recent album, 2016’s Coolaid, may have been the lowest charting studio album in his career, but the music industry also isn’t what it used to be. And that’s not to say people aren’t listening. His most played track on Spotify is 2011’s ‘Young, Wild & Free’ with almost 300 million listens.


With well over two decades in the game, Snoop can do something as unrelentingly goofy (and, well, bad) as Mac & Devin Go to High School, but still bring rap authenticity to the things he touches. Rap is still figuring out what to do with its elder statesmen, but with his hands in progressive television and the increasingly growing cannabis industry, Snoop is here to stay.

Claire Lobenfeld is on Twitter.

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