Snoop Dogg has admitted that he “didn’t like” 2Pac‘s famous diss track “Hit ‘Em Up.”
Sitting down with Big Boy for an “Untold Stories” interview, the Long Beach rapper reflected on his turbulent relationship with his former Death Row Records labelmate in the days leading up to his death in September 1996.
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Snoop said he and ‘Pac were on great terms a week before his passing, but complimentary comments he made about Diddy and Biggie days later changed that.
“Man, I’d say a week before he died, we was best of friends. Two days before he died, I don’t think he liked me,” he explained. “Because we was in New York and shit had happened. New York n-ggas had shot at me and did all kinds of shit to me, just the worst shit you could think of, and I forgave ’em.
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“Then I went and did an interview and was asked how did I feel about Puffy and Biggie. I was like, ‘I like them n-ggas, I wanna do some music with ’em.’
“And that just rubbed cuz the wrong way, like, ‘N-gga, fuck them n-ggas, them n-ggas tried to kill me. N-ggas shot at you, and you talking about you wanna do a song with them n-ggas?'”
He continued: “I wasn’t thinking about [2Pac’s] emotions, I was thinking about the way I felt at the time. I wasn’t into no controversy. I liked them n-ggas’ music, they was our friends, we was all friends at one point.
“There’s video footage of all of us hanging out. ‘Pac, Biggie, Puff, Suge [Knight], all of us together prior to Death Row, just on some regular shit. So that to me, I never seen myself getting involved.”
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For that reason, Snoop Dogg wasn’t a fan of “Hit ‘Em Up,” 2Pac’s vicious 1996 diss track aimed at Biggie that heightened the East Coast–West Coast rivalry.
“Even when he played the video for me to ‘Hit ‘Em Up,’ even when he played ‘Hit ‘Em Up,’ the song, I didn’t like the song,” he said. “I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the shit. It wasn’t the shit to me. Like, you buying more problems, cuh. You buying problems. Gangstas is everywhere. They make ’em everywhere.”
He added: “I think he got to the mindstate that, ‘We the muthafuckas, and ain’t nobody like us.’ Always people like us everywhere.”
Fellow Death Row alumnus Kurupt also recently reflected on “Hit ‘Em Up,” claiming 2Pac recorded the track immediately after being visited by Biggie’s ex-wife, Faith Evans, in the studio.
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“When ‘Hit ‘Em Up’ dropped, that was around the time everything was fresh. 2Pac and Biggie was fresh, because this was after Faith came to the studio,” he said in an interview with The Art of Dialogue. “She came to work and, you know, we was all looking like, ‘Damn! That’s Faith, cuz!’… Then he made ‘Hit ‘Em Up’ [laughs]. That fast.”
Revisit “Hit ‘Em Up” below.
