Snoop Dogg Almost Signed To Someone Else Before Dr. Dre But They Dropped The Ball

Snoop Dogg has been a Hip Hop icon for decades thanks to his signing with Dr. Dre back in the early 1990s — but things almost didn’t turn out that way.

Tha Doggfather sat down with Big Boy earlier this week for a chat on his Big Boy Off Air YouTube show, during which he revealed that he almost signed with a completely different collective that at the time didn’t take him or his career seriously.

“Y’all don’t know this story,” Snoop told Big Boy. “I was with Above The Law. Above The Law was about to give me a situation — but they had me waiting on the bench. I was behind Kokane; I was behind another girl named [Mz] Kilo, and I was waiting behind Above The Law’s next album that they were doing. But Laylaw and [Big] Hutch and the whole crew, Go Mack and the whole nine. They fucked with me and Warren G; Warren G was they n-gga!

“So Warren G brought me to them, and they was like, ‘Okay, we gon’ fuck with him!’ But, ‘Sit down there and play that Madden while we work in the studio.’ And this was when we was comin’ from Long Beach to Inglewood, didn’t even know I was going through a Blood neighborhood on the Metro while Warren G was trying to make a career happen.”

Fortunately, things took a turn for the better when the “Murder Was the Case” rapper met up with former NWA legend Dr. Dre.

“[Dr.] Dre is about to leave Ruthless. It’s not [known yet], but he’s about to leave,” he continued. “I’m just trying to get on. So I’m in here with these n-ggas every day. Friday, they take me upstairs in the studio — one of the only times. And they play a dope-ass track for me, and they’re like, ‘This yours. Monday, we gon’ record this.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, shit. I finally get to…I’m on, n-gga.’”

Take a listen to Snoop’s interview with Big Boy below:

Snoop Dogg almost signed to someone else before Dr. Dre👀 pic.twitter.com/IC9V2R46G3

— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) April 15, 2023

Though Hip Hop heads know the story of how Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg got to Death Row Records, Keefe D recently revealed that Eazy-E was allegedly asked to join the label first.

Keefe, a childhood friend of Eazy and the uncle of 2Pac’s alleged killer, Orlando Anderson, made the revelation during an interview with VladTV earlier this month.

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The Compton native and former gang member explained that he had a friend who was in prison with Death Row co-founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris, who one day asked him to set up a phone call with Eazy.

“They called and asked me to hook them up on a conference call with Eazy-E. So I called, they talked to Eazy and they asked him, do he want to run their record company?” Keefe said, confirming they were referring to Death Row. “They offered it to him first.”

According to Keefe D, however, Eazy expressed concerns about doing business with people behind bars and ultimately turned down the offer. The next day, Harry-O got in touch with Dr. Dre, who accepted the proposition.

“Once the phone call went dead, Eazy showed up to my house 30 minutes later. He like, ‘Dude, them dudes in jail and I’m already established,’” he recalled. “So the next day, my partner that was in the feds with Harry-O, he like, ‘Let’s call Dr. Dre.’ And he called Dr. Dre and Dr. Dre took the deal.”