Decades before rappers were able to type rhymes on their phones, Snoop Dogg resorted to clacking away on a typewriter to write his lyrics. In a recent episode of The 85 South Comedy Show, the West Coast icon revealed that in the early days of his career he would borrow a typewriter from 2Scoops of the G-funk group The Dove Shack rather than using a notebook.
“Them the little homies,” Snoop said about the Long Beach rap trio. “2Scoops that was in the group, when I first started writing raps I used to use that n**** typewriter… I was writing on paper, cuz, and I would lose my shit and this n**** typewriter was organized. This n**** had paper organized and shit, so I was like, ‘I’m just gonna type my shit up’ and I used to type like 65 words a minute, n****.”
Snoop explained that he learned how to use a typewriter back in junior high. “It was a skill I took up at a little white junior high school I went to,” he said. “They gave a n**** typing classes and I took it. I was one of them students that — I took a wood class, a metal class, I took typing, I took home economics… I didn’t just want to be in the class with the homies and shit and then go home and get a whopping and get in trouble for fucking up.”
Several years down the line, some of the lessons Snoop learned in home economics would pay off when he collaborated with Martha Stewart on their VH1 show Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party.
Watch the full interview below; Snoop begins talking about the typewriter around the 43-minute mark.
Earlier this month, Snoop Dogg dropped the album Snoop, Cube, 40, $hort as part of his supergroup MOUNT WESTMORE with Ice Cube, Too $hort, and E-40. He also has a Doggystyle sequel called Missionary that’s produced by Dr. Dre on the way. In November, Snoop announced he would be putting out a biopic through his newly formed Death Row Pictures with Menace II Society director Allen Hughes helming the project.
