ROCK: What’s weird is, a week after that, I had to go to LA to do videos. And everywhere I went, people were like, “Yo, man, you shouldn’t have said that shit about Suge.” I’ve never seen people fear a guy so much in my life. It was like the whole world had become high school. And these were gangstas—not just punks like me.
That guy made some great records though. Suge Knight’s name is on some of the best records ever.
I remember interviewing Snoop Dogg right after he left Death Row, and he had no bodyguards, no security, nothing.
ROCK: Maybe it was like the end of Donnie Brasco, where Al Pacino knows he’s going to die. But he doesn’t blink. He just takes off his watch and all his rings and he goes down to his death.
That may be. Snoop recorded these songs about how Suge Knight was responsible for Tupac’s death. And he wasn’t scared.
ROCK: The weirdest thing about being really successful is that you are kind of ready to die. Especially now that I’ve got kids. I mean, I want to live. Don’t get me wrong. But I’m not in fear of dying. I’ve made my mark. Death is the enemy of my family—of my wife and my daughters. But to me as an artist, it’s actually my friend.
(Looks at tape deck.) It better be working. You’re getting some good shit.
SNOOP DOGG: I heard what Suge said about me in The Source magazine. What’d he say, that Tupac didn’t like me or something?
No, he said that you and Tupac had a falling out after the MTV Video Music Awards.
SNOOP DOGG: Yeah, we had a falling out because I didn’t feel it was right for him to bring everybody involved into his feud. If he had a problem with Biggie Smalls or Puffy Combs, he was a grown man. He should have been able to handle that shit on his own. Don’t bring all of us into some shit that you can handle on your own. From what I was looking at, them boys didn’t want no problem. Puffy and Biggie never said, “Fuck Tupac, fuck Death Row, bring it on.” They always was like, “We wanna be peace, we wanna make it happen.” And I’m a grown man. If a motherfucker don’t wanna quarrel with me or don’t wanna shoot-out with me, why am I gonna force the issue? All I’ll say is this: Gangstas don’t talk, they take care of their business.
Watch that left turn right there.
What happened to your relationship with Tupac after that?
SNOOP DOGG: We didn’t speak after he left New York. But I went to see him when he was in the hospital all shot up, because I had love for that nigga and I love him to death to this day. I look at myself as a real friend: A real friend is gonna tell you the motherfucking truth. There’s certain shit that Pac told me that hurt my feelings and made me mad, but I loved him for it because he was real and he told me the motherfucking truth. And Suge Knight can’t speak on me and Pac, because our relationship was genuine, the same way his and Pac’s was. Like I can’t speak on how he had Tupac in the car with him doing stupid-ass gangbang shit in Vegas. That’s on him. That’s their relationship. If he had been with me, he probably would have been playing a video game, smoking on some weed, and fucking a bitch or something. Doing all that stupid-ass Mafioso shit—stupid shit.
Do you think it would have been better for Tupac if he was never on the label?
SNOOP DOGG: He probably should have just did songs with us and been down with us but not been signed to us, because the influence was too much. You become too infatuated with it.
Bust a left. If I go in here, I’ll have to sign eight thousand motherfucking autographs and take eighteen pictures.
We pull into a grocery store parking lot, and Snoop sends me inside to buy Pampers while he waits in the car. Afterward, we return to Snoop’s studio.
What happened to the famous armored van you got to protect yourself?
SNOOP DOGG: It used to be on the side of my house, but I got rid of it. My armored van is God, man. He gonna get me through everything. ’Cause if he ready for me to go, that armored van can’t do shit. I could be getting out of the armored van and get blown the fuck up.
People think that now you’re living behind barred windows, surrounded by armed security guards—
SNOOP DOGG: Man, you’re here. When you pulled up this morning, I let you in. When we went to the store, it was just me and you. Man, I’m chilling. Niggas know where I’m at. I ain’t bringing no problems to nobody. If you say something about me, I’m gonna say something about you. If you steal on me, I’m gonna steal on you. If you jack me, I’m gonna jack you back. That’s just the way I do it. I’m defensive, man. I’m not offensive no more. I’m not the type to go out there and just beat up a nigga for nothing. I’m just kicking back watching to see what you’re trying to do to me.
Snoop rails against Suge Knight and Death Row for another hour, makes sure I have the cassette with his new songs, then lets me leave. On the way home, I notice that Snoop’s Pampers are still in the backseat of the car, along with his bottle of barbecue sauce. I drive back and leave them in front of his door.
[Continued . . .]
I wanted to ask what you thought of gangsta rap.
JOHNNY CASH: You know, I don’t know. I was about just coming onto the music scene when they wouldn’t shoot Elvis Presley below the hips on The Ed Sullivan Show. And I was working with Elvis when all these older people were saying that he’s leading our kids to hell. I thought that was the strangest thing I’d ever heard. I was born in the Bible Belt and raised up in it. And Elvis is such a good person and loved gospel music, a Christian. And that hurt him. And I thought it was just terrible that people would say things like that about him. Then all the rock artists that came along, they said that about them, too. But it doesn’t bother me. Maybe gangsta rap does have some influence on young people, but damn, I think the six o’clock news is probably the most violent thing we hear today.
The reason I was asking was because a lot of people point to your lyric, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”—
CASH: Fantasy.
Yeah, and they point to it as the first gangsta rap lyric.
CASH: It’s a reflection of (coughs) the society that we’re living in, just like the movie Natural Born Killers. It’s grossly overstated and the most violent thing I have ever seen, but I couldn’t walk out of the movie because it’s so riveting. And it’s throwing our violence right back at our face. You look at what’s going on in this country as far as crime: It’s hypocrisy to blame somebody for some violence because of a song lyric. I don’t know if that’s right. I wrote, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” over forty years ago and I don’t know of anybody that’s gone out and done that just because I sang about it.
I was wondering, only because you deal a lot with it in your music, has your relationship with God changed over those forty years?
CASH: I think it’s stronger than ever. You know, there were times when I was taking prescription drugs and was addicted. My addiction was really flowering and, um, I put God way back on the back burner. ’Cause with taking drugs, I had an awful, awful big ego. And you think you’re invincible and bulletproof.