How Pharrell Helped Snoop Dogg Rap About Women with ‘Respect’ Not ‘Derogatory Words’ (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Snoop Dogg and Pharrell Williams.Photo:JC Olivera/WireImage; Pascal Le Segretain/Getty

JC Olivera/WireImage; Pascal Le Segretain/Getty

It’s important to take good advice.

That’s a lessonSnoop Doggsays he’s learned over the years, and one that has been a key to his longevity in the music industry.

“I just want to keep getting better and better, and being around people that want to see me do better,” the hit rapper and belovedOlympics commentator, 52, tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. “Even if that means that I’m not the smartest person in the room, that don’t offend me because that means more learning rather than teaching.”

One person he learned something valuable from was pal and hit producerPharrell Williams. While evaluating his career in the late ’90s Snoop realized, “I was stuck in a box with keeping it gangster and trying to appease the hood,” he says. “I had one singular target that I was aiming at and really didn’t have room to grow.”

Snoop Dogg.Steve Fenton/REX/Shutterstock

Ready for a new energy and sound he set out on his own, launching Doggystyle Records in 1999. When he connected with Williams for his 2002 album titledPaid tha Cost to Be da Boss,he was also open to a new perspective on women. His 2003 hit “Beautiful” was Williams’s idea.

“He made me do that song. I would never do a song like that in the ’90s, but he tapped me into the side that I really never paid attention to. He was like, ‘You’ve been rapping about women and calling them and h–s and they love you,'” says Snoop of his misogynistic lyrics in the past. Williams continued, “‘When are you going to take time to show them that you love them and appreciate them?'"’

It’s a question that resonated. “I had to think,” says Snoop. “I was like, ‘Damn. I am kind of hard on them. Let me listen to you. What should I do?'”

In the studio, Williams “started naming all the women in my family. I was like, ‘I get it … put the beat on.’ Since then I’ve been on more of a respect my queen rather than use derogatory words to explain my feeling towards females.”

These days, Snoop Dogg takes his voice very seriously. “I take care of my voice,” he says of drinking tea often. “It’s not trying to be like nobody else. It’s just me doing me, and I think that it’s comforting to your ears to know that it remained the same for so many years and it’s always been laid back and silky and in pocket and refreshing to hear. Even if it was over some hardcore music, it was always the right instrument.

Snoop Dogg, Reba McEntire, Gwen Stefani, Michael Buble.Trae Patton/NBC

Trae Patton/NBC

Now,as a coach onThe Voice, he’s passing all of his wisdom down to a new generation of artists.

“I think I’m going to be a coach with care and concern, with honesty and truth,” he says, “and more or less taking some of my own personal experiences and using that to be like the guidelines to how I coach.”

For more on Snoop Dogg pick up this week’s issue, available now.

source: people.com