“Even watching that, my spirit is bubbling right now,” Snoop said of Pac’s words.
Snoop Dogg recently responded to a video of the late 2Pac speaking about the condition of Black Americans. The tape, which Snoop saw during an interview on MSNBC’s Mavericks with Ari Melber, led the living legend to reflect on the challenges we face in our ongoing fight for social justice.
“We asked with the Panthers; we asked with the Civil Rights Movement,” 2Pac said of previous calls for equality. “We were inquiring. Now that the folks who were asking are all dead or in jail, what do you suppose we’ll do? Ask?” When he saw the video, Snoop answered angrily, “F**k no,” to his late friend and former labelmate’s hypothetical query.
“You get it now. Even as I watch that, my spirit is bubbling,” the rapper continued. “I feel like fucking somebody up just hearing that, because I know it transports me back to a time when our voices didn’t count. They would take what we were saying about corruption and violence and turn it around on us as if to say, ‘No, you have a problem.’ You’re a thug.’
Snoop continued to bemoan the erroneous picture of Black people as violent, blaming America itself. He also linked the demise of the Black Panthers and other organizations to the continued prosecution and incarceration of rappers.
“No. Snoop reasoned, “America is violent.” “We were calm. The Black Panthers were formed in order to hold arms and carry out peaceful activities. You came and shot and knocked them out, and now we don’t have a voice. And now, when we try to express ourselves as rappers, you want to lock us up and claim our music causes people to kill each other and this and that, and therefore we can’t bear arms.”
The rapper concluded by emphasizing 2Pac’s continuous significance and legitimacy.”Everything he was talking about is happening right now, yet this was 25 years ago.” It will not change unless we rise up, make a difference, and take a chance. That’s why we do what we do, and why we’re moving as fast as we are right now.”
At the 23:16 mark, Snoop Dogg speaks with Ari Melber about justice:
