Snoop Dogg‘s debut album Doggystyle immediately made history when it first dropped on November 23, 1993. Believe it or not, the silky smooth, yet oh so gangsta Snoop Doggy Dogg was the first artist to have a debut LP enter the Billboard 200 album charts at #1.
With more than 800,000 units sold in its first week of release, Doggystyle managed to hold a distinction that most would assume would belong to the Beatles or Elvis Presley, or anyone other than a 22-year-old Crip from Long Beach, California.
At the last count, the RIAA has calculated that the ground-breaking gansgta rap album has sold more than four million records in the U.S. alone. When it dropped the album was inescapable, with songs like “Who Am I? (What’s My Name)” or the party-starting “Gin and Juice” and while you may be hard-pressed to find a rap fan who hasn’t listened to the classic LP, there is always at least one exception.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever listened to the whole album and I’m being honest with you,” Snoop Dogg told MTV News on Friday while he was out promoting his upcoming album 7 Days of Funk. “I ain’t never listen to Doggystyle top to bottom. I may have listened to songs, but I’ve never listened to it.”
That doesn’t mean that the Doggfather doesn’t grasp the magnitude of his magnum opus. “Back then it meant a lot because it was being able to stand on my own two feet and put out a project for the first and to actually be heard and seen for who I am individually,” he told us. “Now what it means, it’s an accomplishment. Looking back at it, it was very well put together, it was standards, it showed me the way to do it, the only way to do it.”
Everyone has their favorites, but for Snoop it’s either the melodic “Gz and Hustlas” or the cinematic “Murder Was the Case.” According to the D-O-Double G “Gz and Hustlas” was just a freestyle that he ecorded while doing a mic check in the booth, but “Murder Was the Case” was much more difficult to put together.
” ‘Murder Was the Case’ that was kinda hard because I started writing on another beat and I was writing a different kinda story. And then once Dre gave me that beat the story came to life and it was like I’m writing a story about me making a deal with the Devil, me going to jail,” Snoop said of the song that in a way foreshadowed drama in his real life after he was put on trial for murder.
“These things didn’t even happen to me, then I’m writing about ’em and slowly but surely those things began to happen to me,” he continued.
Snoop was eventually acquitted of the charges brought against him, and though Doggystyle was soaked in quite a bit of controversy, it ultimately had a lasting power. “Through my career I’ve been able to put out projects that were strong and muscular like that, that were able to stand the test of time and become classics and I believe that project is what shaped and molded me because it was the first project that I put out on my own where I was my own guy,” he said.
Such a milestone deserves some celebration, so what does Snoop Dogg have planned for Saturday?
“I’m smoke 20 years’ worth of do-it fluid, I’ma wake and bake on UStream, I’ma go see my little football team for a minute, give them some love, go home with the family, watch some football. Then probably make me another song as a celebration,” he said.
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