Jelly Roll is set to appear on Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre‘s forthcoming Missionary album, and now that the news is out, he’s sharing the story of how it came about.
Talking with Bootleg Kev for his eponymous podcast in an episode published on Thursday (October 24), an excited Jelly recalled the FaceTime that sparked it all.
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“I won’t say anything about the record because he didn’t, but man, it’s special. It is really good,” he gushed. “I’m legitimately on the Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre album. It’s crazy. It’s unreal. Dude, Jimmy [Iovine] hits John [presumably Jelly Roll’s manager John Meneilly] and says, ‘Can we get on a FaceTime with Jelly Roll and Dre?’ I’m like, ‘Dr. Dre?!’ I get on a FaceTime from my back porch. I’m like a kid! Jimmy’s there and I’m already like, ‘I cannot believe it’s Jimmy Iovine.'”
When Dre got on the phone, according to Jelly: “[He said,] ‘I got this crazy idea. I can send you something, or you can write something and send it back, or you can come here and we can write something.’ When he said that, I was like, there’s no way he expected me to do any other option. I was like, ‘If coming and writing with you is an option, I’m coming.'”
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He continued: “It was the most awesome session I ever did. I walked in was just like, the biggest warm hug. […] It was really fun. […] I had a moment where I was like, I belong in those rooms! [In my mind], I’m still the kid coming to the lunch table. I wanna prove that I deserve the table and I came in with that kind of attitude and it was really cool.”
Jelly Roll revealed what it was like working with Dre: “He is a conductor of a symphony. He hears everything and he hears it 20 different ways and he’ll like, put his ears up to these two speakers and you’ll start singing and he’s like, ‘You were flat [here], a little sharp [here].’ He’s not a perfectionist in like a picky asshole way, but like a super encouraging way. He makes you feel like a rockstar too. He’s clearly correcting me and getting what he wants out of me but doing it while like making me feel like I’m like Adele. I’m over here feeling like Frank Ocean.”
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The convo begins at the 2-minute mark below.
During an interview at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles earlier this month, Snoop Dogg continued to tease the project’s star-studded supporting cast.
“This new record is gonna put me in a position to probably have that final big stadium tour ’cause there’s a lot of features on this record that I’m excited about that are big-name artists,” he said.
“I got a feature from Jelly Roll and Sting. I’m so happy that me and Sting got a record that’s so good.”
He also shed light on the making of Missionary, likening it to his early career when Dre would take the reins in the studio.
“In my mind, I made it up that I’m gonna go back to being Snoop Doggy Dogg,” the rap legend said. “I want to be the student, the kid, the passenger. I want to humble myself and go in the studio and allow him to tell me what I need to do and produce me.
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“You discovered me when I was a rock, you created this diamond, so I’ma allow you to shine it one more time.”
A release date has not yet been announced.
