One of the juiciest rap beefs in recent memory came to a very quiet end a few months back, when Snoop Dogg picked up his phone and made a private apology to fellow Dr. Dre protege Eminem, as Snoop explains on an upcoming episode of our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast. “I know how to call Marshall and say, man, I apologize,” Snoop says in the episode, which airs October 29th on SiriusXM’s Volume channel (106) and will be available as a podcast on November 3rd. “‘I was wrong, bro. Do you forgive me?’” The two veteran rappers then teamed up to record a new song set for release on next January’s album from Snoop’s Mt. Westmore supergroup, which also includes Ice Cube, Too $hort and E-40.
In an interview on the Breakfast Club radio show last July, Snoop suggested he wouldn’t rank Eminem among the Top 10 rappers of all time, and Eminem shot back in his song “Zeus”: “I’m used to people knocking me/But just not in my camp… Last thing I need is Snoop dogging me.”
Late last year, Eminem explained why he was upset: “Everything he said was fine, up to a point,” Eminem said in a New Year’s Eve interview on Shade 45. “Him saying Dre made the best version of me, absolutely, why would I have a problem with that?…. it was the last statement where he said, ‘Far as music I can live without, I can live without that shit.’ Now you’re being disrespectful. It just caught me off-guard.”
“You got to understand we really love each other,” Snoop says. “So we don’t want the public to put a spin on something that’s not even that serious…. And we truly respect each other. So we wanted to get an understanding behind closed doors… We’re brothers, man. You know, my [real] brother hurt my feelings a lot of times — I wanted to join a gang and he wouldn’t let me!… You learn to understand and respect each other as brothers, as family members, and you respect each other’s opinions. And as long there was no disrespect directly or ill will, then it can all be forgiven and it can all be moving on.”
Snoop and Eminem recorded their upcoming new song “about two months ago,” Snoop says. “And that motherfucker slap. It was very challenging for me, I’ll say that. Eminem really fucking shot at me, he shot his shot. And as a rapper, that’s what you want when you get a feature, to have to fucking work your ass off. You want somebody to come to the playing field, putting up points, to where you got to rethink your shit and say, ‘Well, damn, this is what he thinks of me. That’s why he’s going so hard, because he knows that I’m going to match him on the same level.’ And that’s what it is when you make records with people that you love and family. It’s competitive, but it’s competitive for the right reasons to bring the best out of each other.”
Snoop and Eminem will perform with Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige in the Super Bowl LVI halftime show on February 13th. “Look at everybody who’s up there,” Snoop says. “And then look at what they mean to Dr. Dre. It’s a Dr. Dre presentation. So we’re basically getting his back, coming through like his soldiers are supposed to line up, when the general say, ‘Line up.’”
From Rolling Stone US
