In the 1990s, Snoop Dogg simultaneously celebrated the release of his debut album and his induction into fatherhood. Nine months after releasing his hit album “Doggystyle” in November 1993, the West Coast rapper welcomed his first son, Corde Broadus, in August 1994. Reflecting on this period of his life with People magazine, Snoop Dogg revealed that his friend and fellow rapper Tupac Shakur helped him find a balance between fatherhood and fame.
“I was working on Tha Doggfather [his sophomore album]. So when [Corde] was old enough able to pee and all that other s***, I started taking him to the studio with me,” he told the publication.
Reportedly raising Corde “around all of the homies,” Snoop Dogg remembers Shakur meeting his son in the studio and quickly becoming a part of the village that raised him.
“Tupac loved him. It’s like his nephew. Tupac was a better dad than me,” Snoop reminisced. “We’ve been up here [in the recording studio for] three hours and we ain’t got him nothing to eat. It’s like I’m up here rapping and s***, I’m not being a father. [He was] training me.”
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Unfortunately, Shakur’s time with Snoop Dogg and his son was cut short. In 1996, the rapper was involved in a drive-by shooting that eventually killed him. Despite his death, Shakur’s impact on Snoop Dogg’s parenting lived on as he welcomed his second son Cordell Broadus. Understanding the power of community when parenting, the “Drop it Like it’s Hot,” says his late friend inspired him to put his sons in football.
“I put them in football and I watched them work together. Football helped me to become a real good father because I was around other men who were single parents, or either had a great wife, or was a grandfather raising their son’s kids — so much I could learn from them,” Snoop explained, eventually becoming a football coach. “So football and all that was a blessing on me being a father because it taught me how to be a father.”
Beyond fatherhood, Snoop Dogg says that Shakur taught him “a different kind of work ethic.”
“I always had a good work ethic about myself as far as being timely, being on point, and being a professional. But he just showed me how to be a little faster…[and to] not [just] fall in love with it, but fall in love with the craft of being able to do it and continue to do it,” he said in an Instagram post. “I feel like that was something that was passed on to me, and now I’m showing it through my work…And it passes that on to the young generation to show them that you can do the same.”
