Snoop Dogg recently reacted to a montage of the late 2Pac speaking on the plight of Black Americans. The clip, which Snoop was shown during an appearance on the MSNBC’s Mavericks with Ari Melber, prompted the living legend to reflect on the struggles endured in our continued fight for social justice.
“We was asking with the Panthers; we was asking with the Civil Rights Movement,” 2Pac said of past requests for equality. “We was asking. Now those people that were asking, they’re all dead and in jail, so now what do you think we’re gonna do? Ask?” Upon viewing the clip, Snoop responded in an impassioned manner, answering “F**k no,” to his late friend and former labelmate’s hypothetical question.
“Now you get it. Even watching that, my spirit is bubbling right now,” the rapper continued. “Like I feel like fuckin’ somebody up from just hearing that, just because I know it puts me in that era, that zone when our voice didn’t matter back then. Things we were speaking to as far as corruption and violence and all that, they would take it and reverse it back on us as if, ‘No, you got a problem. You’re violent.’
Snoop continued to lament the inaccurate portrayal of Black people as violent, pointing the finger back at America itself. He also compared the dismantling of the Black Panthers and other groups to the ongoing prosecution and imprisonment of rappers.
“No. America’s violent,” Snoop reasoned. “We was peaceful. The Black Panthers was put together to bear arms and do all this peaceful stuff. Y’all came and shot them down and knocked them down, and now we don’t have a voice. And now when we try to speak as rappers, you wanna lock us up and say our music is making people kill each other and this and that, and then we can’t bear arms.”
The rapper concluded by noting the continued validity and relevance of 2Pac’s words. “All the stuff he was speaking to is happening right now, but this was 25 years ago. If we don’t stand up and make a difference and make a chance, it won’t change. That’s why we do what we do and we movin’ like we movin’ right now.”
Watch Snoop Dogg speak with Ari Melber about justice at the 23:16 mark below:
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