On a hot summers day in Knightsbridge, we had the opportunity to link up with the iconic Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. The two icons were stationed in a plush West End hotel to support the UK launch of their new product – Gin & Juice by Dre & Snoop – as well as their forthcoming new album Missionary.
It’s only right that we got the details on both, as well as their thoughts on UK artists, Dre learning about “Talking The Hardest” and his own involvement in it for the first time, Kendrick Lamar’s pop out show and plenty more too. Needing little introduction, see what the GOATs had to say below.
First of all, most importantly, welcome to London. We’re here today because of the Gin & Juice by Dre & Snoop launch. I feel like this is the most perfect brand synergy I’ve ever heard in my life. Top three. I’m wondering, why now to launch this product?
Dre: “It all started from a song 30 years ago. I don’t remember whose idea it was to decide to make this our next project and our next brand or whatever. But just so you know, it’s not a project or a product that we decided to just stick our names on and our faces on and shit like that. We created the gin from scratch. We went to a laboratory and created the gin and the flavours and everything. So this is really us and we’re really trying to do this the right way.”
You guys are super hands on with a lot, the tasting and flavours etc?
“From the tasting, to building the actual gin, to building the flavours and taste testing and making sure the flavours had enough sweetness and enough salt or whatever the fuck. Everything is just us from the ground up, like everything that we’ve done in our past.
You both started as musicians, but you both have an expansive portfolio of business and ventures. How important is it for artists, and I guess anyone, to look into that sort of stuff and find new avenues?
“I mean, that’s the key to longevity. Discovering things as you go along with your career and figuring out what else you can do in your career to maintain and keep going. You know, think about it. Snoop is 30 years in, I’m almost 40 years in, and they’re still talking about us, they’re still interested in us and what we’re doing, and it’s getting better!
“I feel like, right now, I’m personally making some of the best music I’ve ever made in my life. I feel like I’m in this new thing and this new saga, and it feels amazing. We have a new product, we have new music. I’m making brand new music with my brother Snoop, and everything feels amazing. The product is fantastic. Visually, we’re doing some really impressive things with film, so, yeah, this is just the next saga of our thing.”
You mentioned the new album [with Snoop] that I’ve heard rumblings of for a little bit. Your creative partnership goes back decades, it’s storied, with so many classics. How does the process differ now creatively when you two get together, compared to how it did back when you started off?
Snoop: “I think now it’s more like perfection. Back then it was raw when we first started. I think the rawness of him and me and the age that we was at, we just was like instinct, naturally making shit happen. Now it’s more about precisely aiming at what we want and wanting this particular sound, style, like, everything is particular. Back then it was just, it was so dope, and it was raw. A freestyle could go on the album. Now it’s like, we particular about every line and every part of the music.“
“There’s a certain level of maturity that’s involved with it now. It’s really weird at this age trying to come up with like concepts and different things to rap about, because, you know, hip hop is a young man’s game, so trying to do it on this level at this age, it has its own difficulties that come involved with that shit. But, we’re able to supersede that and come up with something that I think the audience is going to gravitate towards.”
Not to make assumptions about the album, but I’m expecting a thoroughly West Coast affair.
“You won’t be disappointed, I promise you won’t be let down. But it’s some world wide shit”.
“To me it don’t feel like a West Coast album, it feels like a global album.”
That leads into a next question I wanted to ask you guys. What are your thoughts on the state of hip-hop generally? I think, with the internet, we’ve kind of homogenised the sound a little bit.
“It’s not just the internet. My opinion, as a producer, it’s the access to certain software, certain sounds and shit like that. Unfortunately, all the new artists and producers are using the same sounds and software, which is the reason why a lot of the music that’s coming out all sounds the same. Even using the same cadences with the rhymes and shit like that. All it’s going to take is just for one young person, a young Snoop or a young Dr Dre or Kendrick or Eminem, to come out of the woodworks and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to try something different with this software.’
“But right now, the state of hip-hop and music in general, everybody’s using the same software and the same rhythms and doing it the same way. So that’s why right now, all of the music sounds the same. So all it’s going to take is for a new Kurt Cobain to come out and use the same software and technology a different way, and it’s going to make everything that’s happening in the present sound old as shit.”
Conversely to that point, I feel like really recently, we’ve seen a resurgence – I guess, if you want to use that word – of the West Coast sound. We’ve had certain records popping off this year that really sound like the West Coast. Do you think it’s still important to maintain that level of regionality in music?
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that question, because we just do what we do. You know? I guess you could call it a West Coast sound, because we’re from the West Coast. But we’re making our music for the entire planet. Call it a West Coast sound, because we’re from the West Coast, call it that. But that’s not the intention. We’re just making hot music.”
“When it first was coined the West Coast, it was because we used a lot of funk, and we was influenced by the music that was in our culture when we was kids. But then once we started making music, this shit got bigger than just making West Coast music. It was music that was appealing to the world, globally, like even over here in your country. What was it about our music that made y’all gravitate to it? It wasn’t that much about the West Coast, it was because it made you feel good.“
“Our whole thing was influenced by the East Coast. We were influenced by East Coast hip-hop, of course, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, that was our influence, and we just did it our way. We just took all of these elements – I was even a fan of Kraftwerk in Germany – so taking all of these influences and making it our own. I guess you can call it West Coast hip-hop, because of where we’re from and where the music is coming from. It got that label, but I’m just making music. It was never an intentional thing. I’m just making music. It just turned out to be that way and just got this label. I didn’t label it that.”
“Actually, if you really want to be real, when I first started making records, my whole thing was to impress the East Coast more than the West Coast. I would think I was making East Coast music so them n****s could like it. That was my train of thought.“
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