Snoop Dogg's new album BUSH is due out next week and is already available to stream. In a new interview with New York Times Magazine, Uncle Snoop dishes about the genres he loves, his thoughts on gang violence and rioting, legalizing marijuana, race relations, and white rappers. Here are a few things we learned:
On why BUSH has more singing that rapping:
"There's a void for that style of music. I think if rap never came out, I'd have been a R&B singer. I would have been like Rick James, though - an edgy renegade."
On Iggy Azalea and Macklemore's role in hip-hop:
"Rap is supposed to grow. One thing about Iggy and Macklemore: They got soul. They're inspired by hip-hop. I don't care how you're gonna take it to your people and flip it and dip it and serve it. "
On the images he's posted on Instagram from the Baltimore riots:
"You've got Bloods and Crips and Muslims now uniting for some kind of cause. Despite that man losing his life, so many people are gonna come together behind that - people who wouldn't have talked, who would have been killing each other, now they're gonna be with each other."
On his experience with the 1992 L.A. Riots:
"The day they started, I jumped in the car and drove to L.A. Eventually we stopped in this little neighborhood in Compton. There were some Bloods, and they needed some help trying to carry this safe. We got out and helped them, and they were like: 'Good lookin' out, blood. Where y'all from?' And we were like: 'We're from Long Beach.' They invited us to a party. We go down there, smoke, chill, go home, drop our stuff off, come back the next day, do some more stealing, meet some more gang members that we definitely ain't supposed to be hanging with. It was magical."
Snoop's new Pharrell-produced album BUSH drops May 13 and features guest appearances by Stevie Wonder, Gwen Stefani and Kendrick Lamar.
