Rare Footage Of Snoop Dogg And Tupac Encouraging Community To Vote [Video]
Previously unseen footage has been unearthed of Suge Knight, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, and several other Death Row Records artists participating in the Brotherhood Crusade Rally on August 15, 1996, The Source reports. The rally was one of the last events Tupac attended before being shot dead a month later. Check out the video below.
In the clip, Tupac compares Death Row record sales to the number of potential voters and boasts about the impact of their influence to an adoring crowd.
“My record sales, we got six million. Snoop got four million,” Pac said “Dogg Pound got three million. And we keep going. That means we represent that many votes. If we can represent that many votes, we gotta let these politicians be scared of us. That means anytime we drop something y’all gotta pick it up. Every time y’all call for us, we gon’ come.”
Snoop followed up Pac’s speech by stressing the importance of voting and representing the community in order to incite change.
“It’s our voice that means something. It’s all on us,” said Snoop Dogg. “If we don’t speak ain’t nobody gonna speak for us. They gon’ speak against, so we got to speak up. As a rapper. As a brother from the community. Somebody who is intact with what y’all feel and with what y’all go through. I’m one of the main voices saying that I’m with getting out here, voting. And getting y’all to get out there and vote. And be about what you about cause y’all community is you.”
Snoop’s debut album, Doggystyle, was released in 1993 under Death Row Records, debuting at number one on both the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts, and selling almost a million copies during its first week of release. After leaving Death Row, Snoop signed with No Limit Records, where he recorded his next three albums before leaving in 2002 to sign, what would begin, a series of contracts with various labels until September, 2009, when he was hired by EMI as the chairman of a newly launched Priority Records. He released his thirteenth studio album, Bush, in Ma,y 2015.
Tupac joined forces with Suge Knight upon his release from jail in 1995. Shakur immediately began recording his first album with Death Row and released the single California Love. He was gunned down on Las Vegas Blvd. on September 7, 1996. After his body was cremated, members of his rap group, Outlawz, mixed some of his ashes with marijuana and smoked him.
Death Row filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and was auctioned off in 2009 to entertainment development company WIDEawake for $18 million. The label continues to release material, selling nearly 50 million albums worldwide.
Suge is currently behind bars on murder charges stemming from a fatal hit-and-run — all caught on video — during a promo shoot for the N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton. He continues to make wild allegations about the death of Eazy-E, including the longstanding “conspiracy theory” that Eazy died as a result from purposely being injected with HIV, as The Daily Beast reports.
Check out the rare footage in its entirety below. Snoop Dogg and his Death Row Records colleagues begin speaking at the 8:00 minute mark.
[Image courtesy of MTV ]
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