When you tell people you’re going to interview the rapper Snoop Dogg, they gleefully start adding “izzles” and “shizzles” to the end of their words, because that’s how he talks, the king of the comedy suffix. And then, when you do join Snoopizzle on his European tour and he turns up three hours late to the hotel in Amsterdizzle, and leaves the lift having a blazing row on his mobile phizzle about “how ain’t nobody gonna f***ing tizzle me I can’t smoke in the hotel room when they ain’t even in the same country and why we even staying in a nine-star when we coulda stayed in a two-star and smoked in the bizzle dizzle . . .” It’s something of a revelation — he even shizzles while he’s swearing!
The career of the man born 38 years ago as Calvin Broadus has swung between comedy and criminality, between prison and superstardom. So, after he has finished barking into his phone and I’m worried that he’s going to bark at me too, he turns round, gentle as a lamb, and announces softly: “I am ready when you are.”
He is gangly and slender, as tall as his bouncers are wide. We share a sofa but he doesn’t face me, his sunglasses and hat still on, a joint cupped between his fingers as he talks about his new album, Malice N Wonderland, purposefully grinding ash into the hotel table. “When the record starts off you can tell I’m rapping with a lot of bad energy in my heart. So that’s the first half, that’s Malice,” he says slowly. “By the time I get midway through the record it tones down and takes on a different direction, and by the end I find myself in Wonderland. And you know, that’s for the ladies. I been calling women ‘bitches’ and ‘hos’ my whole career and I didn’t make songs for them. So I took time to give them that love and respect on this record.”
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London Times - The new mellow Snoop Dogg still has bite
