Dr Dre & Snoop Dogg on “Talkin The Hardest”, Little Simz, new ‘Missionary’ album & more

On a hot summers day in Knightsbridge, we had the opportunity to link up with the iconic Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. The two icons were stationed in a plush West End hotel to support the UK launch of their new product – Gin & Juice by Dre & Snoop – as well as their forthcoming new album Missionary.

It’s only right that we got the details on both, as well as their thoughts on UK artists, Dre learning about “Talking The Hardest” and his own involvement in it for the first time, Kendrick Lamar’s pop out show and plenty more too. Needing little introduction, see what the GOATs had to say below.

First of all, most importantly, welcome to London. We’re here today because of the Gin & Juice by Dre & Snoop launch. I feel like this is the most perfect brand synergy I’ve ever heard in my life. Top three. I’m wondering, why now to launch this product?

Dre: “It all started from a song 30 years ago. I don’t remember whose idea it was to decide to make this our next project and our next brand or whatever. But just so you know, it’s not a project or a product that we decided to just stick our names on and our faces on and shit like that. We created the gin from scratch. We went to a laboratory and created the gin and the flavours and everything. So this is really us and we’re really trying to do this the right way.”

You guys are super hands on with a lot, the tasting and flavours etc?

“From the tasting, to building the actual gin, to building the flavours and taste testing and making sure the flavours had enough sweetness and enough salt or whatever the fuck. Everything is just us from the ground up, like everything that we’ve done in our past.

You both started as musicians, but you both have an expansive portfolio of business and ventures. How important is it for artists, and I guess anyone, to look into that sort of stuff and find new avenues?

“I mean, that’s the key to longevity. Discovering things as you go along with your career and figuring out what else you can do in your career to maintain and keep going. You know, think about it. Snoop is 30 years in, I’m almost 40 years in, and they’re still talking about us, they’re still interested in us and what we’re doing, and it’s getting better!

“I feel like, right now, I’m personally making some of the best music I’ve ever made in my life. I feel like I’m in this new thing and this new saga, and it feels amazing. We have a new product, we have new music. I’m making brand new music with my brother Snoop, and everything feels amazing. The product is fantastic. Visually, we’re doing some really impressive things with film, so, yeah, this is just the next saga of our thing.”

You mentioned the new album [with Snoop] that I’ve heard rumblings of for a little bit. Your creative partnership goes back decades, it’s storied, with so many classics. How does the process differ now creatively when you two get together, compared to how it did back when you started off?

Snoop: “I think now it’s more like perfection. Back then it was raw when we first started. I think the rawness of him and me and the age that we was at, we just was like instinct, naturally making shit happen. Now it’s more about precisely aiming at what we want and wanting this particular sound, style, like, everything is particular. Back then it was just, it was so dope, and it was raw. A freestyle could go on the album. Now it’s like, we particular about every line and every part of the music.“

“There’s a certain level of maturity that’s involved with it now. It’s really weird at this age trying to come up with like concepts and different things to rap about, because, you know, hip hop is a young man’s game, so trying to do it on this level at this age, it has its own difficulties that come involved with that shit. But, we’re able to supersede that and come up with something that I think the audience is going to gravitate towards.”

Not to make assumptions about the album, but I’m expecting a thoroughly West Coast affair.

“You won’t be disappointed, I promise you won’t be let down. But it’s some world wide shit”.

“To me it don’t feel like a West Coast album, it feels like a global album.”

That leads into a next question I wanted to ask you guys. What are your thoughts on the state of hip-hop generally? I think, with the internet, we’ve kind of homogenised the sound a little bit.

“It’s not just the internet. My opinion, as a producer, it’s the access to certain software, certain sounds and shit like that. Unfortunately, all the new artists and producers are using the same sounds and software, which is the reason why a lot of the music that’s coming out all sounds the same. Even using the same cadences with the rhymes and shit like that. All it’s going to take is just for one young person, a young Snoop or a young Dr Dre or Kendrick or Eminem, to come out of the woodworks and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to try something different with this software.’

“But right now, the state of hip-hop and music in general, everybody’s using the same software and the same rhythms and doing it the same way. So that’s why right now, all of the music sounds the same. So all it’s going to take is for a new Kurt Cobain to come out and use the same software and technology a different way, and it’s going to make everything that’s happening in the present sound old as shit.”

Conversely to that point, I feel like really recently, we’ve seen a resurgence – I guess, if you want to use that word – of the West Coast sound. We’ve had certain records popping off this year that really sound like the West Coast. Do you think it’s still important to maintain that level of regionality in music?

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that question, because we just do what we do. You know? I guess you could call it a West Coast sound, because we’re from the West Coast. But we’re making our music for the entire planet. Call it a West Coast sound, because we’re from the West Coast, call it that. But that’s not the intention. We’re just making hot music.”

“When it first was coined the West Coast, it was because we used a lot of funk, and we was influenced by the music that was in our culture when we was kids. But then once we started making music, this shit got bigger than just making West Coast music. It was music that was appealing to the world, globally, like even over here in your country. What was it about our music that made y’all gravitate to it? It wasn’t that much about the West Coast, it was because it made you feel good.“

“Our whole thing was influenced by the East Coast. We were influenced by East Coast hip-hop, of course, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, that was our influence, and we just did it our way. We just took all of these elements – I was even a fan of Kraftwerk in Germany – so taking all of these influences and making it our own. I guess you can call it West Coast hip-hop, because of where we’re from and where the music is coming from. It got that label, but I’m just making music. It was never an intentional thing. I’m just making music. It just turned out to be that way and just got this label. I didn’t label it that.”

“Actually, if you really want to be real, when I first started making records, my whole thing was to impress the East Coast more than the West Coast. I would think I was making East Coast music so them n****s could like it. That was my train of thought.“

Speaking on that cultural exchange of sounds. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you speak about it, but there’s a real classic UK rap record by an artist called Giggs, called “Talkin The Hardest”. I don’t know if you know much about it?

“I don’t. You gotta put me up on that.”

When I say this is a classic record, I mean, if you’re out in London, everyone will rap every word to you. It’s like the fabric of our thing. But it was a freestyle originally on one of your beats. It was a Stat Quo song called “Here We Go”.

“Wow. You have to give me that.”

“Is it like a real hit? For example, if we had a concert and I played it before, it’s gonna go off? That might be the Woo Wop before we come out.“

“I gotta hear this.”

“But he telling you!”

“I know he’s telling me, but I wanna hear it!”

*Plays “Talkin The Hardest”*

“That’s crazy.”

“If he come out to perform it’s fucking crazy? Left field. Is Giggs in town?”

“Send it to me so I can listen to it on the way.”

My question was going to be, when did you become aware of that song? But today is the answer.

“He was today years old when he found out about that song.”

“I have so many songs, man. I feel like, let’s just say, from 1985 until right now, I probably only put out, spitballing, just 30% of the music I’ve made. I just love recording. I just go on and just record and talk shit. I have a shitload of music in the vault, that being one of them.”

That shows the amazing power of music, right, that you made that and you didn’t even know that it’s taken on this whole new life of it’s own?

“No idea bro. That’s crazy!”

“He said it’s the anthem cuz! I just want to see how people gonna react to that record that you don’t know nothing about!”

“I remember the music. I don’t think I ever even finished that.”

I’m telling you, if you bring Giggs out with this, it’s crazy.

“I know what you telling me. That’s why I want you to give me the record, because when I play it when [Dre] ain’t playing attention, I’ma be like ‘Hey Dre this that record we were talking about’. He’ll be like ‘Hey man that’s my music, turn that shit up, it’s my music!”

“I remember the music. I never heard that though, I never heard my man’s voice on it. That’s crazy. Giggs? I loved the few seconds I heard.”

Yeah Giggs. He’s an OG over here, he’s been in the game for 20 years. He’s still doing his thing now. He couldn’t travel to America for a long time because of, like, criminal history and visa issues and stuff.

“Oh, yeah, we know about that, right?”

But really, recently, in the last couple years, he’s travelling back and forth to the States. You guys should link up.

“Okay. I wanna hear the whole shit.”

On a similar note, is there anyone from the UK you’re familiar with in terms of artists?

“You know who I really love in the UK? They got a new album out right now. Marsha Ambrosius.”

“Yeah, she’s from your town. I just did a whole album with her, it’s called ‘Casa Blanco’. This was supposed to be my first attempt at making a jazz album, but, of course, it had a hip hop influence, so it’s jazz-hip-hop-fusion slash R&B. I got the orchestra and the whole shit on there.”

“I love it. I play it on my own, but when I hear it on a radio station, I got to send it to him, like, cuz, this shit is that thing, people feeling what I’m feeling.”

In terms of UK rappers, are you guys not super up on it? Just because someone like Central Cee, I don’t know if that name is familiar, but he’s in the charts in the States right now. He’s got a tune with Lil Baby. That’s kind of unprecedented for our thing in terms of really breaking over there.

“Is that the main thing for artists to try to break in America from over here?”

For a while it was. But then people refocussed their attention to here again and we have our own thing going on.

“All you gotta do is be great. If you’re great, that’s one thing about our music, that we feel like if it’s great, it’s gonna fucking translate.“

I think what is kind of an issue here, with our rappers especially – like with singers, it’s a bit different, because you lose tone maybe when you’re singing – but with rappers, I think the accent is maybe difficult for US audiences to kind of invest in sometimes and maybe the sounds are a little bit different.

“I don’t know, sometimes it sounds a little like Jamaican to me, which translates. I’m wondering why Little Simz didn’t translate with that song, ‘Gorilla’. Even the video was fantastic. Dave Meyers did the video who we just worked with recently. That video was amazing.”

You’ve performed over here many times at festivals and shows and stuff. Are there any differences in terms of crowd or vibe that you get from over here compared to back home?

“Well to me, the crowds here are much more exciting. I always talk about this when I’m back home, the crowds here are much more exciting and much more appreciative. It’s an entirely different thing here. I’m not just saying that shit bro.”

“Is Glastonbury here? That was like my best experience performing. That shit was like a fucking whole stadium of people, but on the ground, like oceans of motherfuckers. I performed there with the Gorillaz, but it wasn’t them. It was the fucking cartoon. It was me and the cartoon. Bro it was crazy as fuck! It was just me and some cartoons. They fuckin’ going crazy for this shit. You n***** ain’t gonna come out? It’s just me and the cartoon? For real? Aite, fuck it.“

You guys have released music through different eras of the industry; pushing records, selling CDs, downloads, streaming. What do you make of the landscape of the music industry, and particularly, from a producer’s perspective, I wondered if you had any thoughts on AI in music and how that’s being utilised?

“Me personally, I’m only involved in the creative. I don’t like leaving my house. I don’t like leaving the studio. I just want to make the music and then the business is whatever. Snoop has a different outlook on it and different perspective. I just want to be creative.”

“It used to be a time where I cared about record sales, like, man, I want to go platinum. I want to go this. I don’t give a fuck about that no more. I care about how people feel about the music, how my music makes you feel. What’s the experience of it? Do you come up to me and tell me, ‘when you made this record, you helped me get through or this did this for me’. That’s more of a meaning than a sale, when it used to be all about sales.

I’m not an artist myself per se, but I feel like that’s probably when an artist makes their best art, right? When you’re not trying to do something. It’s just what’s coming out.

“Mmhmm, absolutely.”

Going back to LA: I know you came out at the Kendrick show recently Dre and performed with him. I just wanted to know a little bit about the experience there. I don’t know if you were there Snoop, in the crowd or anything.

“No, I was in Canada on tour. Can you believe that?”

I don’t even know if you’re trolling, but that’s funny.

“No, I’m being honest!”

How important is that kind of unity in the city?

“From my perspective from where I was sitting at and watching on YouTube and seeing the whole experience, I love the fact that Kendrick Lamar took that situation and created peace amongst the city of LA. There was so many gang members on that stage that loved the moment, that respected Kendrick enough to know that this isn’t just for today, but we’re trying to live this way every day, to where we can work with each other, communicate, ‘Hey, Blood’, ‘What’s up cuz’ and it’s no disrespect.”

“Not even just on the stage, what he was able to accomplish afterwards in the city of Compton and have everybody come together. That was the beautiful moment and it would be amazing if that could continue. It’s crazy that it took this thing to be able to make that happen.”

“That’s why I say Kendrick is a real king, because a real king takes moments of violence and creates peace. See, you thought it was a violent moment with the song and all of that disrespectful shit back and forth between them, but his main mission was to create peace, because that’s what he did. He created peace at the end of the day. Now, Compton, Long Beach, LA, Inglewood, homies is in the hood moving around on unity right now, even to this day, right? Over here, they doing picnics, functions, baseball games, like it’s like this in the hood now. So Kendrick, great job.

“You know like y’all got your football teams? This team, this team, y’all be fighting like a motherfucker. It’s like that. You’re on certain teams, you got to wear this jersey. Just imagine if all of them just said, no matter who wins, we’re cool with each other. We’re cool. Y’all don’t got that cool shit. Somebody got to be able to create that.”

“Isn’t it always weird there’s something or someone that has to be sacrificed in order to bring everyone together?”

“Hmm. I didn’t think about it like that.”

That’s an astute point.

“You good at your questions too cuz. You dancing around, and you repping your culture too! They sent the right motherfucker. Shout out to Brixton, East London, everywhere, you sent the right motherfucker.“

“Yeah, this was a good one.”

Thank you man, it has to be done. It’s important stuff. Finally then, both of you have mentored different artists – superstars – over the years. How do you guys look at mentorship, and what do you look out for in talent?

“I personally never want to be in a room with anybody I can’t learn something from, so it’s a give and take for me. I’m teaching and I’m learning. It’s like, who wants to be in a room if you’re just up here and barking out orders and shit like that, you know? That’s it for me. I have to feel like I can learn something from you on any level. It’s not just music. Why would I want to be in that type of room if I can’t get something out of it?”

Yeah, that makes sense. That’s how you have longevity again, right? It’s learning new things from new people.

“My mentorship, I love the fact that I’m old enough to know now. To be able to be an example and for youngsters to come to me, especially when it’s about violence. When they come to me and they really want to end it, and I’m cool with both of the rappers, or both of the people that’s involved in the parties, and they don’t know how to come to a agreement, and they both call me and my mentorship helps them get to peace. That’s what I love about my mentorship, is that people trust me enough to to come to me in the time of need, and they depend on me to give them direction. And I’m really good at it, whether it’s through sports, with kids, music, or just a life in general. I love the fact that I’ve grown into that today.

That’s it for my questions. Did you guys have anything final you wanted to leave with the people?

“Yeah, make sure y’all buy a whole lot of Gin & Juice!”

“And check out the new ‘Missionary’ album. That’s the title of the new album.”