The Dunedin Free Press

Cordozar Calvin Broadus, Jr. bounced as many heads as possible at the State Theatre Monday. Broadus, otherwise known as rapper Snoop Dogg, was originally slated to perform at Bourbon Street in New Port Richey. A last minute venue change, however, put him in St. Petersburg.

Broadus and company toured through St Petersburg after Snoop Bowl 8 in Miami. The bowl is now in its eighth season. The match featured the Snoop Dogg Allstars, a team made up of youth all stars versus a team made up of all stars from the host city.

Snoop coaches close to 2,500 kids in the Snoop Youth Football League. The teams are broken up into 10 chapters throughout California.

Last year’s match featured Snoop against Mike Allstot, who coached the Tampa all stars.
All football aside, it looks like 2010 will produce a variety of Snoop-a-phanelia.

Snoop is planning to release More Malice, a DVD-and-CD-in-one featuring new, unreleased material from the Malice in Wonderland sessions. Malice, originally released in 2009, featured guest appearances from R. Kelly and Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em. The album debuted at #23 on Billboard’s US sales charts selling over 61,000 copies.

And, he’s releasing the Check Yo Self G-Mix exclusively on Myspace Music, adding to a recording career that’s already spanned two decades. The G-Mix is off the Snoop Dogg Presents: The West Coast Blueprint album. “Check Yo Self” features the Hustle Boys, who are currently on Priority Records, a company that features Snoop as Creative Chairman. The album is set for release on February 23.

This is 50 via Rolling Stone reported in January that he’s already signed Cypress Hill to the label. They will release a new album, Rise Up, on April 6th featuring a first single by the same title with a guest appearance by Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello. Rumor has it that Slash and Linkin Park’s Mike Shinodo will make guest appearances on the album as well.

Priority records, owned and operated by EMI, is also home to rappers Ja Rule and Al Kapone
Snoop began rapping when he was in sixth grade. He sang and played piano in Golgotha Trinity Baptist Church.

His music career came to life after Dr. Dre discovered the rap artist on a mix tape with one of Snoop’s early freestyles over En Vogue‘s “Hold On.” He first worked with Dre on the theme for the 1992 movie, Deep Cover, and appeared in a few songs on Dr. Dre’s debut album, The Chronic. He released his first album, Doggystyle, in 1993 on Death Row Records. The album went quadruple platinum, and featured a seminal Snoop hit, “Gin & Juice.”

Since then, Snoop has recorded with No Limit, Geffen and Capitol records. He’s lent his vocals to a number of different guest appearances, including a side project with Nate Dogg and Warren G in 2004 called 213.

His soft-spoken style was nearly singular at his start in hip hop. Kool Moe Dee names him #33 in his book There’s A God On The Mic: The True 50 Greatest MC’s. Calling him “one of the smoothest, funkiest flow-ers in the game,” calling his delivery “ultra-smooth” and “laid back” and his rhyming “flavor-filled” and “melodic.” He praises Snoop’s word choice saying ”he keeps it real simple… he simplifies it and he’s effective in his simplicity.” The 2009 book How To Rap: The Art & Science of Hip Hop, notes Snoop’s use of syncopation and linking rhythm with complex rhymes in his flow to give it its laid back feel, and his use of sparse flow with pauses and alliteration.

Snoop Dogg worked in Bollywood in 2008, singing the title song of the Indian movie, Singh is King. He is a celebrity voice of the Tom Tom GPS navigation system.

It seems the only sore spot in Snoop’s career are his legal troubles, which, unfortunately, have followed him throughout his career.

He is currently banned from entering the U.K. for “the foreseeable future,” resulting from a 2006 incident at Heathrow Airport. In the incident, he and members of his entourage were arrested when they threw whiskey bottles in a duty-free shop there, after being denied entry to the British Airways First Class Lounge because some members of their party were flying economy class.

In September 2006 he was detained by security at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport when they detected a collapsible police baton in his carry-on bag. The following month he was arrested at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank for possession of marijuana and a firearm. He was arrested again for the same charges after appearing on The Tonight Show in November that year.

In 2007, Swedish police in Stockholm detained the Doggfather on drug use “suspicion.” Police claimed he and a female companion had a pungent smell of marijuana.

A 2007 ban on his entry to Australia was lifted in 2008 by the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship. The department stated that, in making the decision, they “weighed his criminal convictions against his previous behavior while in Australia, recent charity work and any likely risk to the Australian community.”

But, despite his checkered past, whenever and wherever Snoop takes the stage, not a soul in the crowd will care as long as there’s a beat.