Snoop Doggy Dogg, ‘Gin & Juice’: When Snoop terrified Britain

Snoop Doggy Dogg, ‘Gin & Juice’

Song facts

Released: January 18, 1994
Highest UK chart position: #39 on February 6, 1994

This week, we’re talking about the song that was at Number 39 on February 13, 1994…

1.Who listens to the words that I speak

Back in 2014, Her Royal Highness Kate Middleton attended a public event wearing a hoodie.

Hoodies are a very common item of clothing these days, but Kate still caused a stir in right-wing press. Was she making a political statement? Was she, heaven forefend, outing herself as a chav?

You see, the UK has long associated hoodies with a particular class of person. Hoodie-wearers are young, male, working-class, violent, fond of pretty crime, and a bit scary. They wear hoods to hide their faces from CCTV cameras, allowing them to rob and stab at will.

For years, the word “hoodie” didn’t refer to the sweatshirts, but to the people who wore them. Tony Blair introduced legislation to tackle the scourge of Hoodies, while businesses started banning anyone in a hood. Deputy PM John Prescott talked to the press about how he felt intimated when he saw gangs of hoodies congregated outside his local petrol station. Most people knew how he felt.

When David Cameron tried to launch his Compassionate Conservatism strategy, he talked about the need to show empathy and love to disaffected young men. The press dubbed this the “Hug A Hoodie” policy.

All of this was part of a long-running problem in Britain. As the post-war economy evolved, a generation of working-class young men found themselves suddenly obsolete. Occassionally, the establishment was forced to acknowledge these groups existed—like during the epidemic of football hoooliganism in the 80s, or the drug-fuelled rave culture of the 90s.

Hoodies (aka yobs or hooligans or chavs or neds or NEETs) were Britain’s great unsolved problem. The establishment was happy to ignore them, but there was always a fear that they might somehow become organised and pose a real threat. What if a charismatic leader got them to unify behind a cause.

And for one week in 1994, the British establishment feared that such a leader had arrived.

2. With so much drama in the LBC

A very quick bio of Snoop Dogg, who was then known as Snoop Doggy Dogg:

Calvin Broadus Jr was born in Long Beach, California. His mom was from Mississippi, which is why he raps with a slight Southern drawl. She also called him Snoopy because of his resemblence to the caratoon dog.

As a teen, Snoop was involved with gangs and sold drugs, eventually getting busted and landing in a juvenile detention centre. A kindly parole officer took him under his wing, helped Snoop avoid serious jail time, and encouraged him to focus on music.

Meanwhile, Dr. Dre was going solo after an acrimonious split with NWA and Ruthless Records. Snoop, now aged 21, managed to get a demo to Dre, and the two collabed on Dre’s debut single, the title track of the movie Deep Cover.

Dre’s ground-breaking debut album The Chronic heavily featured Snoop’s rapping. Dre himself was never that confident on the mic, so their next project was a solo Snoop album, Doggystyle.

While recording Doggstyle, Snoop and his bodyguard had an altercation with Snoop’s neighbour. The neighbour was shot dead. Snoop was charged with murder and finished the album while out on a $1 million bail. A few months later, Doggystyle became the fastest-selling debut LP in Billboard history.

Up to this point, Gangsta Rap had seemed slightly performative. Sure, rappers talked about crime and violence, but heavy metal bands talked about summoning Satan and nobody took them seriously.

But Snoop destroyed the genre’s plausible deniability. This man was a drug dealer. This man was a killer. He rapped about being proud of his evil deeds and suburban white kids loved him.

Snoop had a lot in common with Britain’s Hoodies. He seemed to represent a new kind of evil, driven not by hate or greed but by boredom. You could imagine him loitering outside your local petrol station. You could imagine him stabbing you simply because there was nothing on TV.

When Snoop announced that he was coming to the UK, the British press lost their minds.

3. It’s kinda hard being Snoop D-O-double-G

The anti-Snoop movement was led by a Conservative MP called Terry Dicks, who had previously denounced Nelson Mandela as “a Black terrorist” and called for Eastenders to be cancelled after they showed BBC’s first-ever gay kiss.

Dicks said of Snoop:

We don’t want a man involved in murder and advocating the use of drugs in Britain. He should be put on the first plane back.

Another of Dicks’ colleagues questioned how Snoop got a work permit and promised to raise the matter in the House of Commons. Meanwhile, Snoop told The Daily Star, “I am here to spread my message to the youth of Britain.” Chilling words, if you believed he was planning a Revolt Of The Hoodies.

And Snoop was almost kicked out of the UK on his arrival. When the Dogg Pound landed in their Kensigton hotel, one member of the crew lit some incense. A porter smelled this, figured it was most likely crack, and called the cops. Snoop and his entoruage were forced to go outside while police searched their rooms for drugs and weapons.

Snoop waited defiantely on Kensington High Street with a massive boombox on his shoulder, like Radio Raheem in Do The Right Thing. In a interview the next day, he said:

“Smoking crack! We’d only left the passport place (Heathrow immigration) 15 minutes before, and they searched us for drugs — where would he get crack? Write that they served me eggs with roaches in them.”

Cops followed Snoop almost everywhere. His only live performance during this brief press junket was at the Equinox in Leicester Square, and a phalanx of riot police stood outside the club all night, waiting for the gang war that was sure to erupt inside when Snoop began spreading his message.

A tense nation held its breath.

4. Laid back

Hurricane Snoop left the UK a few days later, and the British press were left reeling in confusion. The most dangerous man in music had turned out to be… quite nice?

Here’s how confused they were—Q Magazine’s April edition has the headline SNOOP DOGGY DOGG: BAD TO THE BONE, but the feature inside is titled SNOOP DOGGY DOGG: A PUSSYCAT? Their story opens with Snoop talking mournfully about one of his dead homies, only to reveal that he’s discussing not discussing a fallen crip but… Benny Hill.

They all acclaim dead homie [Benny] Hill as “the bomb”, the ultimate gold star in Doggspeak and a term they only normally apply to people like Snoop’s producer, Dr Dre, and his mentor in rap, Slick Rick. The sight of this elderly English japester … seems to strike a chord with the lanky 22-year-old who prefers to be known as Snoop Doggy Dogg: he too likes putting on funny, high-pitched voices.

Soon, Snoop and his two co-rapper sidekicks, “Dat Nigga” Daz and Kurupt, are hard at it with their cod English accents – “Larverly, cheers mayte!” – baffling The Word‘s harrassed-looking studio technicians with their good-natured bonhomie and inexhaustible willingness to run through the same three-minute segment, again and again. Where, you can almost hear the unspoken question, is these guys’ “attitude”?

Snoop himself seemed to find his London trip incredibly relaxing, and a welcome break from the pressures of L.A. life. Talking about the Equinox gig, he said:

“That crowd treated me like Elvis. I thought motherfuckers here would know who I was, but I didn’t expect that. Bitches, I mean womens, were faintin’. But there weren’t no problems, no violence. We ain’t used to doing shows without no violence. ‘Cos them motherfuckers back home don’t know how to act.”

The other members of the Dogg Pound seem enchanted by England’s relative tranquility:

Kurupt, spells it out: “When your police, ay kay ay The Bobbies, walk around like those guys last night with no straps (aka guns), you know you gotta be in a bomb of a country.”

Daz: “Yeah, can you imagine how the niggaz back home would love that?”

Snoop: “Man, that’d be like being in Vietnam without a gun.”

In fact, Snoop’s entire UK visit only resulted in one act of violence. Snoop appeared on Channel 4’s The Word alongside Rod Hull and his psyhcotic Emu. As usual, Emu spent the entire show viciously attacking Snoop, who took it in good humour.

But during the end credits, Rod Hull was nowhere to be seen. Snoop had wrestled him to the ground and had his foot pressed hard on Emu’s neck. Because Snoop might be a nice, charming guy with a fondness for Benny Hill, but he does not take shit from puppeteers.

5. Everything is fine when you listening to the D-O-G

In hindsight, the fuss over Snoop was ridiculous. The establishment feared that he might galavinse Britain’s Hoodies, but they didn’t understand youth culture enough to know that most Hoodies weren’t even into hip-hop. In 1994, most of those people were ravers. If a Hoodie revolution was coming, it would have been led by Scooter.

Snoop beat his murder charge and mostly stayed out of trouble, gradually evolving into hip-hop’s beloved uncle. He sings Disney songs on TikTok and is besties with Martha Stewart. He’s as dangerous as Benny Hill.

That said, he did manage to get himself banned from the UK in 2006. After an altercation in a British Airways executive lounge, the Home Office revoked his visa and indefinitely banned him from entering Britain.

That ban last only four years. In 2010, Snoop Dogg triumphantly waltzed into Britain and headlined Glastonbury. He believes this was due to a personal intervention by none other than Queen Elizabeth II herself:

“The queen said, ‘This man has done nothing in our country. He can come.’ The queen…bow down…When the queen speak, bow down. That’s Harry and William’s grandmother, you dig?

“You think they weren’t there, saying, ‘Grandma, please let him in, grandma. He’s OK. We love his music.’ ‘You know Harry, I’ll let him in for you. He’s not so bad after all and he’s quite cute.’

“Thank you Queen, I love you baby. The Queen, that’s my gal.”

This probably isn’t true. Still, it’s fun to imagine Her Majesty being so enchanted by the G-funk of ‘Gin & Juice’ that she felt a duty to represent for Long Beach and Compton. God sizzle the Quizzle.

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