Earlier this year, Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith compared TDE to Death Row Records, a conversation that Snoop Dogg and ScHoolboy Q revisited later.
In an interview with VIBE, Snoop Dogg dismissed the comparison. “No, they’re not the new Death Row,” said Snoop. “Because TDE did it completely differently than Death Row did it. Death Row did it with a gangsta approach. We was smashin’ on niggas, fuckin’ people up, we was determined to be the hardest, meanest, baddest, coldest, roughest, toughest in the game. That was our mission. TDE, rappers. They peaceful, they love, they get down, they rappers from everywhere, and they represent Hip Hop. They don’t represent negativity and violence, and trying to mash and disrespect. Death Row, we came out disrespectful. Eazy-E and anybody that came out with Dr. Dre. That was our first get-down, was fuck them niggas up first. That’s not TDE mentality. Their mentality is cool with everybody.”
Despite Snoop’s statements, he did point to Kendrick Lamar’s recent aggressive streak (perhaps including Kendrick Lamar’s verse on Big Sean’s “Control”) as evidence of Death Row’s influence on the of the younger crew. “Kendrick Lamar flipped out on everybody, that’s that Death Row influence, that may have cause him to backslide and feel a certain way, which I support fully, and his thoughts on what he said, because I’m from the West Coast, fuck everybody that got a problem with it. But I don’t feel like TDE and Death Row are the same thing in any way. I feel like Death Row paved the way for TDE to do it in their own way so they can stay around for 20 years from now.”
Watch the interview below:
Death Row Records rose to prominence in the early ’90s, lead by Suge Knight, and featuring an all-star roster in Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, and others.
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TDE had its first major-label success with Kendrick Lamar’s platinum good kid, m.A.A.d city, and also features ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, and others.
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