Snoop Dogg Says Tupac Shakur Was ‘Training’ Him to Be a Good Dad While Raising Son Corde: ‘Tupac Loved Him’ (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Snoop Dogg (left) and Tupac Shakur in 1996; Snoop Dogg’s son Corde Broadus in 2023.Photo:Mitchell Gerber/Corbis/VCG via Getty; Cassy Athena/Getty

Mitchell Gerber/Corbis/VCG via Getty; Cassy Athena/Getty

Snoop Doggdropped his debut album and welcomed his first child within a nine-month timespan in the 1990s, forcing him to try to balance fame and fatherhood just as his music career was flourishing.

After releasing his chart-toppingDoggystylealbum in November 1993, the“Gin and Juice”rapper’s first son,Corde Broadus, was born in August 1994.

Now, in an exclusive conversation with PEOPLE forhis cover story, Snoop recalls that period in his life fondly, particularly the help that his famous friend and collaboratorTupac Shakurgave him with his son.

“I was working onTha Doggfather,” Snoop, 52, says, referring to his sophomore album, which eventually came out in 1996. “So when [Corde] was old enough able to pee and all that other s—, I started taking him to the studio with me. … So I’m raising him around all of the homies.”

This is when Shakur met Snoop’s son and started helping raise the boy, at one point reminding Snoop to feed Corde, even if it was just McDonald’s food.

“Tupac loved him. It’s like his nephew. Tupac was a better dad than me,” Snoop remembers. “We’ve been up here [in the recording studio for] three hours and we ain’t got him nothing to eat. It’s like I’m up here rapping and s—, I’m not being a father. [He was] training me.”

Snoop Dogg honors the late Tupac Shakur in 2017.Jamie McCarthy/WireImage

Jamie McCarthy/WireImage

Snoop welcomed his second son, Cordell Broadus, the following year in 1997. He tapped into advice he had learned from his late friend Shakur to continue becoming a better father to both Corde, now 30, and Cordell, 27.

“I put them in football and I watched them work together. Football helped me to become a real good father because I was around other men who were single parents, or either had a great wife, or was a grandfather raising their son’s kids — so much I could learn from them,” Snoop recalls.

Snoop Dogg (left) performs with a hologram of Tupac Shakur at Coachella in 2012.Christopher Polk/Gett

Christopher Polk/Gett

Not long after his boys started playing football, the 16-time Grammy nominee founded theSnoop Youth Football Leaguein 2005 to give inner-city kids the chance to play football.

“Then from that it was like, ‘I’m getting real good at being a father,’ because coaching some of the roughest kids in the city, their parents got backgrounds that you wouldn’t imagine and we making these kids into something special,” Snoops explains.

“And then my kids are growing up right with them to see how tough it is in these societies and how they’re not living there,” he continues. “They just go there to play football but they don’t have to deal with it, and it helped them understand life. So football and all that was a blessing on me being a father because it taught me how to be a father.”

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Several players from Snoop’s youth league have gone on to become college players or NFL stars, including Houston Texans quarterbackC.J. Stroud, which Snoop has said makes him feel like a “proud father.”

For more on Snoop Dogg, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribehere.

source: people.com