Melbourne Media Shocked To Learn A Reformed Gangster Rapper With Over 400 Songs May Have Had Some Dicey Lyrics In The 90s

CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT

The next couple months represent a real learning moment for Melbourne’s media – as they strive to look past the sugar hits that come with auditing the character of celebrities, and the opiate that is whataboutism politics.

This comes after the AFL announced that literally one of the most famous and popular musicians in the world will be performing at the 2025 Grand Final.

Calvin Broadus Jr, known professionally as Snoop Dogg (previously Snoop Doggy Dogg), is a 53-year-old American rapper, record producer, and actor, who started his career as a high-octane gangster rapper from the streets of LA in the early 1990s.

After nearly 40 years in the public eye, Snoop Dogg survived the gang shootings and Federal racketeering cases of the 1990s, to eventually moderate his public profile into a family-friendly ‘crazy uncle’ persona – much like that of Willie Nelson before him.

From cameos in Ben Stiller films, to voicing cartoon characters in animated kids movies, Snoop Dogg has long stopped rapping about fierce gang rivalries and his ghetto marital woes – and has now evolved into a fully fledged cultural institution.

Snoop Dogg’s decades-long mainstream rebrand culiminated in his role as a broadcast ambassador for CBS at last year’s 2024 Paris Olympics.

The American rapper appeared in just about every second crowd shot throughout the games, with spectators, athletes and fellow VIPs lining up for photographs with the last man standing from the gunslinging 1990s hip hop feuds.

However, with the AFL now grappling with the fact that they cannot stop 19-year-old footballers from making homophobic slurs in the heat of a football match, it appears that Snoop Dogg’s long forgotten past lives have been dragged into a vortex of respectability politics.

In the fortnight since this announcement was made, it seems that every single Snoop Dogg song has been put under the microscope by Melbourne media’s content pigs – with some of the greatest political minds in Australian now taking great delight in chanting ‘double standards’.

Some of the earlier songs did indeed include homophobic and misogynistic lyrics.

This now puts the Melbourne media in a difficult position, as they must choose between forcing the cancellation of an extremely expensive musical act, or allowing their struggling home city to put on a great show that brings huge ratings to a struggling game.

Snoop Dogg has insisted he will only sing the songs about women being beautiful, and being young and wild and free.