As a child, Snoop fell in love with the glitz and glamour of pimp/player culture. This came from both real life exposure to pimps, as well as his infatuation with Hollywoods portrayal of Pimps/Players/Hustlers.
Listen to how Snoop Dogg, one of the most influential black men of my generation speaks about the desire to be a pimp.
“I dreamed of being a pimp.”
Snoop Dogg grew up watching, and eventually trying to emulate blaxploitation movies. One movie that comes to mind is The Mack. This movie stands out, because Snoop Doggs’ first album “Doggy Style” has a few references to the movie. Snoop Dogg and other cultural icons as well as community icons who embraced characters like Dolemite, Superfly and John “Goldie” Mickens influenced later generations.
Non pimps adopted components of these ideals.
An example of Snoop emulating The Mack. The exact line he emulates is at the 2:29 mark. It is important to note that Snoop Dogg was a child watching these types of movies. Snoop Dogg has a web show on Youtube called GGN. He talks about all types of things with some of the biggest cultural icons over the last 30 years. Sometimes it’s funny, and other times it’s educational. In this particular episode featuring an artist named Suga Free. Snoop Dogg and his guest speak casually talk about a huge component of black mens’ culture, Misogyny. Although Snoop Dogg and Suga Free are not the only artists to promote misogyny, this interview is a good start point to explain how some black men think about women. Suga Free attempts to make a distinction between “bitches” and women. Listen to the way both of them talk about women, and the idea of domination. It has to be understood that blaming Snoop Dogg, or Suga Free is not the goal. Hopefully they recognize that this way of thinking towards women is detrimental to the Black communities attempts at repairing the black family. Identifying the root cause of the thought process and de-emphasizing it within black male culture is the goal. We as a community have to start asking, Can we fix the issues in the black community concerning family without de-emphasizing the player/pimp mentality?