Snoop Dogg

Bio

Calvin Broadus is Snoop Dogg. He has been Snoop Dogg since Dr. Dre put him on "Deep Cover" in 1992, and he has continued to be Snoop Dogg, at the same level of cultural ubiquity, for the better part of three decades. There is, on a per-decade basis, no other rapper who has maintained his position as long.

He was born Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. on October 20, 1971, in Long Beach, California. He grew up on the East Side. He went to Polytechnic High. He was, by his own account, in the Rollin' 20 Crips. He started rapping with his cousins under the name Snoop Doggy Dogg in the late 1980s. He sent a tape to Dr. Dre via his stepbrother Warren G. Dre was assembling material for The Chronic. He put Snoop on "Deep Cover" (the lead single from the Bill Duke film soundtrack) and then on basically every song on The Chronic, December 1992.

Doggystyle, his solo debut, came out on Death Row in November 1993. It is one of the best-selling debut rap albums of all time, five million units in its first year. The cool, drawling Snoop delivery — slow, conversational, half-sung, very Long Beach — became the template for a decade of West Coast rap. He could rap. He could write hooks. He could do a chorus that other rappers couldn't pronounce.

He left Death Row in 1998, in the chaos after Tupac's death and Suge Knight's imprisonment, and signed with Master P's No Limit Records. Snoop's No Limit period (Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told in 1998, etc.) is not the strongest material of his career. He pivoted back to a major-label arrangement in the early 2000s and made some of his most commercially successful music: "Drop It Like It's Hot" with Pharrell, 2004. "Beautiful" with Pharrell, 2003. "Sensual Seduction," 2007. He has been on more pop hits than any other rapper of his generation.

He is now: a coach. A team owner. A halftime show co-headliner (he was on the 2022 Super Bowl Dre special). A friend of Martha Stewart. A weed entrepreneur. An NFT entrepreneur, briefly. A coach for Pop Warner youth football. A father. A grandfather. He has been all of these things at the same time, basically, since around 2010.

He is, in 2026, fifty-four years old, still rapping, still selling out tours, still appearing on basically every mainstream cultural surface in America. The thing Snoop has done that other rappers have not is make himself, the brand and the person, comprehensively beloved by the entire spectrum of American culture. Your grandmother knows who Snoop Dogg is. He sells gin in commercials. He still has bars. It is a feat. He is the feat.