After spending the past three decades making the word “shiznit” synonymous with hot property, Snoop Dogg is giving away some of his own.
This week the rap icon announced a partnership with an auction house called The Realest. Snoop’s collection – called, The Shiznit, of course – runs the gamut from bargain bin finds (concert photos, autographed riders) to precious relics (Snoop’s Death Row Records chain, the master reel for Beautiful). “This is the shit we have, but didn’t know it was worth something,” Snoop told Variety. His peers could soon be coming to the same realization.
Gone are the years when album and merchandise sales could sustain a hit recording artist well past their radio prime. These days, a pop idol is lucky to make half a penny for every time their song is played on Apple Music, Spotify or another prime music streamer. Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s global monopoly on concert sales has significantly inflated the cost of live music and discouraged loyal music fans from turning out in support of their favorite performers. And record labels have only become stingier about giving artists control over their masters; even Taylor Swift, the music industry’s golden goose, was forced to re-record her old albums just to claim full ownership over her songs. And even when artists do lay claim to their masters, not everyone has as deep a back catalog as Bob Dylan or Sting, let alone the cultural cachet to command hundreds of millions of dollars for it.
All of this makes memorabilia sales seem like an increasingly viable avenue for artists to take real control over their profitability. After all, sports heroes have been hawking their valuables for years, comfortably subsisting off a global industry with an estimated $26bn valuation. Recording artists are no less adept at hoarding the kind of ephemera that fans clamor for: set lists, tour riders and the like; these forgotten artefacts can sit for years inside the attic of a vacation home or some far-flung storage locker gathering dust. Even the actual junk that is given away – the spare guitar picks, the snapped drum sticks – still holds residual value. Often making the market is as simple as letting fans name their price.
Five years ago Chris Brown announced a yard sale at his Tarzana, California, home and invited about 89 million social media followers. Three hours before Brown opened his gate, people were lined up down the block in hopes of snagging a vintage jacket or designer sneakers at a “significantly marked down” price, per the singer’s catchy flyer. The LAPD tried to shut Brown down, citing crowd control concerns, but was outmaneuvered ultimately by Brown’s lawyer. Brown didn’t exactly need the money. Reportedly, he donated part of the proceeds from his yard sale to an undisclosed non-profit.
For artists who actually need the dough, auctions have proven to be cash cows. With a cursory eBay search for “rock guitar autograph” returning more than 2,700 hits (a signed Jimi Hendrix concert 8x10 for $12.99), it makes sense that artists would open the bidding to some true treasures. Earlier this year a typed letter from Martin Luther King to Tony Bennett in 1965 received 14,000 bids before closing at $78,000, or more than twice the estimated value. In it, King thanks Bennett for joining the historic civil rights march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery and performing at the subsequent rally with Harry Belafonte.
The past decade of music memorabilia auctions alone has seen John Lennon’s hit-making Gibson J-160E fetch $2.5m, Bob Dylan’s handwritten lyrics for Like a Rolling Stone gavel for $2m and Drake pay more than $1m for Tupac’s ruby- and diamond-encrusted gold ring. The windfalls are huge, and in most cases the artist or estate is lucky to get 70% of those sales if they wind up with much of anything at all after paying taxes and lawyers and the auction house – quick to take credit for monetizing celebrity yard sales in the first place. Even Elvis Presley’s billion-dollar estate, the most profitable portfolio in music history, trades enormous valuation for limited family control. Hence why Riley Keough, Presley’s 34-year-old granddaughter, now finds herself in an intense legal fight to stop the sale of Graceland – the family shrine that netted more than $80m in 2022 alone.
The Realest hopes to present itself as a firm that is friendly to artists and fans, taking the same steps to authenticate items that Major League Baseball favors. And starting with Snoop, the rapper who can sell just about anything – never mind his own stuff – was a shrewd choice. From supermarket wine to “smokeless” fire pits to providing turn-by-turn directions for portable satnavs, the Dogfather has never met a product he couldn’t endorse – by himself or with Martha Stewart. Earlier this year Snoop revealed that he had considered a $100m endorsement with OnlyFans; longtime followers were hardly surprised. He might well have dropped it like it’s hot for the members-only porn purveyor if his wife hadn’t intervened. With an estimated net worth of $160m, Snoop, who recently sold and stars in a Prime Video feature film loosely based on his experience coaching youth football in Los Angeles, hardly fits the profile of the faded pop star.
Phase 1 of The Realest’s Snoop auction ends on 2 June. Select items will be exhibited across the country, not least at exclusive preview events in New York and Los Angeles. While there probably isn’t anything in this Snoop catalog that’s quite as coveted as Bennett’s letter from MLK – although a gently used marijuana blunt preserved in resin “to display for eternity” figures to draw considerable interest – he could do worse than hawking his old stuff. He could stick to selling music. “The items he is putting up are iconic,” crowed the founder of The Realest, Scott Keeney, better known as the west coast mix master DJ Skee. “Snoop is passionate about helping introduce an entirely new revenue stream for artists.” Time will tell how much people actually buy in.
