Hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg has never been very hot at holding his opinion, and this time he engulfed all the attitudes of modern rappers about sampling classic hits. Recently, Snoop went off on how he is irritated with the artists of today for being so reliant on old songs without any creativity or innovation to add on their own. According to Snoop, many of these rappers are “f*cking it up” by failing to respect the integrity of the original music.
Sampling-the process of taking snippets of existing songs and reusing them in new tracks-has always been a big part of hip-hop.
From its early days, the genre had artists pay respect to past music by interlacing old and new sounds in creative, new ways. The problem for Snoop, however, isn’t the sampling itself, per se-it’s with the originality and effort he sees lacking in how it is done today. What he explained was that, even though sampling at times can be a powerful creative tool, it takes much more than copying an old beat and slapping it onto a new track. He underscored how necessary it is to bring something new to the table.
“You gotta respect the original,” Snoop said, “but at the same time, you gotta make it your own.” As he would have it, this current fad of redoing the classics without any real innovation involves not just disrespect to the creators but also a certain arrest of hip-hop as a genre.
This is not the first time Snoop has spoken about the state of modern rap. He has, in the past, emulated various modern rappers and used those versions to draw attention to what was, in his opinion, a complete lack of originality in their respective music. He has talked candidly in the past of his opinion that the artists today are riding on the shoulders of those from yesteryear without ever challenging themselves to do more or create something new.
Snoop’s frustrations tap into something deeper in hip-hop today, stuck between paying respect to its past and building towards its future. Hip-hop can’t lean onto nostalgia without at some point really believing it stifles creativity. He doesn’t feel like sampling isn’t just about borrowing from the past; it’s about reimagining that into something new for the culture.
