But it may be that Snoop’s songs, which often depict a world of gun-toting drama, describe a life he has not yet left behind. As he presented the MTV award for best rhythm & blues video, detectives waited outside to arrest him on charges of first-degree murder. Snoop, born Calvin Broadus, avoided arrest at the awards event, but later that evening he turned himself over to the cops.
According to police, Broadus was present on Aug. 25 in Los Angeles when his bodyguard fired two bullets into the back of 25-year-old Phillip Woldemariam. Broadus’s lawyer, David Kenner, claims the shooting was in self-defense, and that Woldemariam had been threatening Snoop for some time. Kenner says that Snoop hired the bodyguard after Woldemariamthen on probation for a weapons violation–stuck a gun to Snoop’s head at a gas station. On Aug. 25, says Kenner, Woldemariam again pulled a gun. “[Broadus is] remorseful that this happened…But he also feels that, but for the bodyguard, we’d be reading about his death.”
The case reflects how in the lucrative world of “gangsta” rap, the dramatic gunslinger posturing is sometimes all too real. Broadus has served time for dealing marijuana and has implied he is a member of the Crips, an L.A. gang. At the time of his arrest, according to police, he was out on bail on a concealed-weapons charge. His mentor, Dr. Dre, has been arrested several times on charges of assault and battery. “Snoop is like a lot of people who are rappers,” says Vibe writer Kevin Powell. “Their lifestyles are not that much different from what they rap about.”
Even as he sold the imagery of his ghetto background to the masses, Broadus was literally running for his life. He has refused to take writers to Long Beach for fear people there wanted to kill him. As he told Rolling Stone, “The other day I was looking at an old picture from back when I used to play Pop Warner football, and like of 28 homies on the team, 12 are dead, seven are in the penitentiary, three of them are smoked out…I love my homies, but damn, I don’t want to stay down there with y’all.” Out on $1 million bail, he is currently on a national concert tour, awaiting arraignment on Oct. 1. His gangster roots and their current chic in the music world promised to be his way out. But ultimately they may be no way out at all.
