Do we like Snoop Dogg?
Our score: 6 out of 10. Mixed on the harm test after repeated comments about LGBTQ+ people and a partial walk-back, and a decent record on the nice test.
Snoop is a rapper who became a mogul. He now owns the Death Row label, and Universal has an overall deal with his Death Row Pictures arm. Its first project is Snoop, an R-rated biopic starring Jonathan Daviss and directed by Craig Brewer, due on 6 August 2027, with Snoop among the producers.
The recent news is a victory lap. He was named host and executive producer of the 2026 VMAs, which landed back in Los Angeles. He has also been a regular on NBC's Olympic coverage and, by the network's own account, a favourite there.
Now the harm check, and this is where it gets messy. On the It's Giving podcast in August 2025 he said a same-sex kiss in Lightyear “threw me for a loop” when his grandson asked about it, and that he was scared to go to the movies. PinkNews also pointed to a 1998 song with a slur in it, a 2014 Instagram post where he used a slur at a fan, and a 2017 video critics read as a caricature.
He then did some backpedalling. He posted on Instagram that he wanted people to teach him how to learn and that he's not perfect. He teamed up with GLAAD for Spirit Day and released a kids' song, Love Is Love, which Fox News reported he followed by calling it a beautiful thing for kids to have parents of all walks. Whether that's a real change of heart or damage control is the open question, and the 2025 slip came after years of earlier ones.
NBC also dropped his planned New Year's Eve special in November 2025 after the Lightyear row. Snoop told Deadline the timing wasn't right and he'd focus on the Olympics, and NBC gave no reason when Fox News asked. So the link between the backlash and the cancellation is the internet's theory, not a confirmed fact.
On politics, he DJed at a crypto ball during Trump's January 2025 inauguration events and got called a sellout for it. He told The Breakfast Club the set wasn't an endorsement and said “I'm not a politician”. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a payday and a bridge-building gig or as cosying up to power.