Hall of Fame: Snoop Dogg

As one of the world’s most famous rappers, Calvin Broadus Jr., aka Snoop Dogg, has been a pioneer and one of the leading celebrity faces of cannabis for what seems to be a lifetime. Throughout his career, Snoop’s persona has changed dramatically from gangster rapper to Rastafari, entertainer to entrepreneur. His love for weed, on the other hand, has never wavered. 

Snoop’s music frequently alludes to the sticky icky, from 1990s classics such as “Gin And Juice” to recent bops including “This Weed Iz Mine (ft Wiz Khalifa).” Snoop is known for his love of blunts and, according to legend, was introduced to them by fellow hip-hop superstar Tupac Shakur. The story goes that the two met at a party for the film Poetic Justice in 1994—the same night, apparently, that Snoop smoked his first blunt. Blunts and the Doggfather were a match made in heaven, and he famously once confirmed to smoke an impressive 81 blunts daily.

In 2015, Snoop turned his love of the plant into a range of business opportunities. He founded his venture capital firm Casa Verde which has managed to build a portfolio valued at $200 million. Through Casa Verde, Snoop was one of the initial investors of Eaze, an Uber-style Californian-based cannabis delivery company.

Snoop launched Merry Jane at TechCrunch’s 2015 Disrupt Conference to start normalizing the conversation around cannabis. Through the platform, Snoop has produced a range of highly successful content series for other networks and the website, including Martha & Snoop’s Dinner Party, Rolling With Rogen featuring Hollywood’s current favorite stoner Seth Rogen, the MTV comedy series Mary + Jane, and Snoop’s talk show, Double G News Network. Here, Snoop famously confessed to guest Jimmy Fallon that he has smoked weed (we like to think he hotboxed) in a bathroom at the White House. Merry Jane has extended into a CBD e-commerce platform.

In November 2015, the Long Beach native became the first celebrity to front a line of personally branded weed products when he launched his eponymous cannabis line, Leafs by Snoop, in Colorado. The range included flowers, edibles and concentrates in collaboration with LivWell.

Snoop’s commitment to campaigning for legalized cannabis has now reached the federal level. In 2021 he teamed up with cannabis prisoner activist and criminal justice reform boss Weldon Angelos from the Weldon Project and right-wing billionaire Charles Koch to form the Cannabis Freedom Alliance. They aim to persuade Republican lawmakers who are split on the issue or wholly opposed to legalizing cannabis to change their minds.

This story was originally published in the print edition of Cannabis Now.