Snoop Dogg probably wouldn’t be considered a political rapper by most. But he does talk politics on occasion and has taken Donald Trump to task on social media and in song.
But despite the California rapper’s seeming interest in politics, he says he’s never voted because he thought his criminal past didn’t allow him to. It’s something that he talked about on the Real 92.3 last week.
“I ain’t never voted a day in my life, but this year I think I’ma get out and vote because I can’t stand to see this punk in office one more year,” said Snoop about Trump around the 11:50 mark of the June 4 interview. “For many years they had me brainwashed thinking that you couldn’t vote cause you had a criminal record. I didn’t know that. My record’s been expunged, so now I can vote.”
Snoop had multiple run-ins with the law before he became famous and afterward and has multiple felony convictions, mostly for narcotics, dating back to as early as 1990.
In 1993 he was charged with first-degree murder after his bodyguard McKinley Lee shot and killed a man named Phillip Woldermariam in Los Angeles, California. Snoop was driving the vehicle at the time. He and Lee were eventually acquitted.
Other legal incidents for Snoop followed, like in 2006 when he was arrested at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California, after marijuana and a firearm were found in his possession.
In the state of California where Snoop is from and resides, the voting rights of a felony offender can be automatically restored once that person is out of prison and no longer on parole.
“We got to make a difference,” he said about finally getting to cast his ballot in November’s general election. “I can’t talk about it and not be about it. I can’t tell you to do it and then don’t go do it. Everybody know I’m a frontliner. I ain’t going to tell you to do something that I didn’t do.”
Although it’s unclear when Snoop might have had his record expunged or when he first learned he is eligible to vote, he has previously urged others to vote and declared that he would be voting. Snoop endorsed former President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race, and declared he would cast his vote for Democratic candidate for president Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race.
