When Snoop Dogg rescheduled his UK and Ireland tour in May 2022, it seemed like fans would have a long time to wait to see the East Coast rapper perform. But time has wooshed by and now Snoop Dogg is playing at the O2 tonight.
Although Snoop Dogg – born Calvin Broadus Jr – is best known for his laid-back hits and stellar music career (he’s been nominated for a Grammy fifteen times), over the last several decades, the 51-year-old rapper has also been carving out a second career in business, with multiple ventures ranging from cannabis products to cookbooks, to stickers. Today he’s worth a tidy $165 million.
In fact, he’s been working so hard on his side projects that Chris Rock even joked about it in his Netflix Comedy special last week: “When did Snoop Dogg become Morgan Freeman?” joked Rock, saying he was selling everything. “Beer, wine, tampons...”
Perhaps the best thing about some of Snoop Dogg’s projects is that they are a little quirky: there was the Martha Stewart cooking show, Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Party Challenge, for example, and then there are his feel-good cartoon affirmations that have picked up millions of fans.
Here’s our pick of Snoop Dogg’s best side hustles.
Affirmations
Our favourite of all of Snoop Dogg’s side projects has to be his Doggyland cartoons and affirmations. The 3D animated web series created by Snoop Dogg, musician October London and actor Claude Brooks focuses on the lives of a group of dogs. The series has been created to be educational and there’s singing rapping and songs, but the best parts – by far – are the affirmation raps.
Snoop Dogg’s character Bow Wizzle sings lines such as “there is no one better to be than myself” and “today is gonna be an amazing day” while the other dogs dance and groove and sing the lines back to him. If it was anyone else we might want to vomit, but because it’s Snoop it’s perfect.
Snoop Cali Red
When Snoop Dogg launched his first wine release in early 2020 he did it with Australian wine brand 19 Crimes, which has started to become a staple on UK supermarket shelves over the last couple of years.
Each 19 Crimes product has a photo of a criminal pasted across its bottle, but for Snoop’s Cali Red, Snoop’s face became the label. Perhaps not unbelievably, the wine has great reviews – and you can still pick up a bottle in most of the UK’s big supermarkets.
Coach Snoop
In 2005, Snoop Dogg set up a Los Angeles (American) football league and began to coach a youth team, with the aim of giving the young men and boys (aged from five to 13 years old) something to do in the evenings and to inspire them to stay focused on their goals.
Snoop’s league is called the Snoop Youth Football League (SYFL) and the team which he coaches is called the Snoop’s Steelers.
In its inaugural season, 1,300 kids took part in the SYFL. In 2018, Netflix made docu-series Coach Snoop about Snoop Dogg’s efforts as a coach.
Chef Snoop
When Snoop Dogg released his cookbook From Crook to Cook: Platinum Recipes from Tha Boss Dogg’s Kitchen in 2018, it did not come as a major surprise. Over the preceding decade, the rapper had released two seasons of the cooking variety show, Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, which he co-hosted with Martha Stewart – and the duo had cooked together in a 2008 episode on her YouTube channel.
The best bit about the cookbook, which has a foreword by Stewart, has to be the dish names: Billionaire’s Bacon, Go Shorty, It’s Your Birthday Cake, Bow Wow Brownies, Spaghetti de la Hood and Baby Got Back Ribs are just a few of our favourites.
Marijuana merch
Given just how much marijuana Snoop Dogg smokes – and has smoked – it makes sense that the rapper would invest in the plant. In California, where Snoop grew up and still lives, marijuana is legal to buy (over the age of 21).
Snoop Dogg has apparently been involved in a wide range of business ventures in this sector, from investing in a weed delivery startup where medical marijuana is delivered to someone’s door in under ten minutes, to a news site about marijuana, to a range of cannabis products including edibles and concentrates, which was called Leafs By Snoop.
Gangsta Gaming League
In Gangsta Gaming League, the esports league which Snoop Dogg launched in 2019, players had to battle to become ‘Top Dogg’. It was set up as an eight-person tournament, was live-streamed and was hosted by Snoop Dogg and comedian Dan Rue. Players Red Woods, Red Grant, JC, Tripo Loc, Lala, Shelton, Waniac, and Young Sagg were the first contestants to take part in the league, while fans could engage with the gameplay online.
