It’s no secret that we were not initially convinced by Snoop Dogg’s transformation last summer into Snoop Lion. It’s always awkward when non-Jamaicans decide to suddenly go reggae, and the first live performances made it seem as if even Snoop wasn’t convinced by his own Rastafarian conversion.
He’s stuck with his new identity though, and the documentary chronicling his Kingston revelations made a decent case for why an aging gangsta rapper might need to reimagine himself like this so late in his career. I guess it’s better to take chances than to just settle into the nostalgia tour circuit.
Last night Snoop Lion dropped a promising new song from his upcoming album called No Guns Allowed, which shines a bit more light on where he’s coming from, and why he might want to leave his past behind. Produced by Major Lazer, it shares some obvious similarities with last summer’s Get Free, but not so much that it feels like a retread. It features Snoop’s daughter Cory B on vocals, the Police’s Stewart Copeland (?!) on percussion, but more notably, Drake on the guest verse.
And that got our attention.
Back when we interviewed Drake last year, one of the topics his publicity team demanded we not broach was the Danzig BBQ shooting, which was on everyone’s mind at the time. It was an odd request, and seemed to be coming more from the American PR team than Drake himself. He even vaguely referenced the tension on the streets in the interview without being prompted. Still, given the sensationalistic dialogue that often surrounds Caribana (not to mention hip-hop itself), we were willing to not make that the focus of a piece that was supposed to be about OVO Fest.
Drake isn’t dodging the topic anymore though, and explicitly references the Danzig shooting in the song by naming Shyanne Charles and Joshua Yasay, the two young people who died that day. For just a few bars of rapping, Drake’s verse leaves a pretty big mark on the track, and feels completely genuine rather than exploitive.
We’re not trying to imply that rappers speaking out against gun violence is going to make any giant difference in the conditions that led to all the bullets flying around Toronto last summer. But it’s a lot better than dodging the question.
