Snoop Dogg says he has given up the rap game and turned to reggae. His new name? Snoop Lion.
He said he had a Rastafarian transformation in Jamaica when he visited a temple.
“I want to bury Snoop Dogg, and become Snoop Lion,” he said. “I didn’t know that until I went to the temple, where the High Priest asked me what my name was, and I said, ‘Snoop Dogg.’ And he looked me in my eyes and said, ‘No more. You are the light; you are the lion.’ From that moment on, it’s like I had started to understand why I was there.”
Snoop said he as looking for new challenges because rap had become too easy.
“Rap is not a challenge to me,” Snoop said at Manhattan’s Miss Lily’s restaurant. “With no disrespect to other rappers, but they can’t f–k with me in rap … I’ve won every accolade you can get in rap, they call me ‘Uncle Snoop’ in rap. When you’re an uncle, it’s time to find something new … I want to feel like a kid again.”
To announce his new career, Snoophas released a new project, Reincarnated, which consists of a documentary, reggae album and book.
The album’s debut single, “La La La,” is now available on iTunes. Snoop had specal words for “No Guns Allowed,” another track on Reincarnated.
“There’s a lot of killing going on in this world, and nobody ever speaks on it until it happens. And I’m tired of it … It’s so tragic that people are still doing stupid things with guns,” Snoop said. “I could have never made a song called ‘No Guns Allowed,’ because I’m supposed to be a gangster and we supposed to keep one on us at all times … But after looking at my life and what it is now and my kids, and all the things that go on in life, I feel like it should be no guns allowed.”
At the Manhattan gathering, a question was directed at Rohan Marley, Bob Marley’s son (and Lauryn Hill’s estranged partner and the father of her children), about whether Snoop’s conversion to Rasta was viewed with any suspicion in Jamaica.
“Music is universal,” Marley said. “Jamaica is just a part of music, so we were open to Snoop.”
In the past, Snoop has said that he believes he is Bob Marley reincarnated—thus the name of the album. It appears that folks should have taken him more seriously.
