On October 20, 1971, Calvin Cordozar Broadus Junior was born… but who the hell is he?
Well, that’s the birth name of Snoop Dogg, but his stage name didn’t come out of thin air – and we have his mother, Beverly Tate, to thank for it.
It seems like the 52-year-old has been in the rap game forever since he was discovered by Dr. Dre – who featured the rapper on his debut album The Chronic back in 1992.
The following year, Dogg released his own debut album which Dre also produced, titled Doggystyle – you can’t not love him can you? What a name.
There was a time he wasn’t Snoop Dogg, however, as in 2012, he briefly adopted the name ‘Snoop Lion’ following a trip to Jamaica – later releasing a reggae album under that name – but he soon returned to Snoop Doggy Dog.
After all, if it’s not broken, why fix it?
He’s been around for 32 years, but people are only just realizing now why he chose the name Snoop Dogg, and would it surprise you if I said it had something to do with Peanuts?
Snoop Dogg with his mom, Beverly Tate (Instagram/@snoopdogg)
Speaking on NBC Nightly News in September, he was asked by news anchor Lester Holt about his iconic moniker while the pair were in France for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
He replied: “My mother’d say, ‘you watch [Snoopy] so much, you startin’ to look like him.’ So she started calling me Snoopy. That’s the only name my mother called me my whole life.
“My mother never called me by my real name, my whole life. All she ever called me was Snoopy. That became my name, that became who I was when I went outside to play, when I went to school, when I went to church, Snoopy.”
You never would have guessed it was something as innocent as a kids TV show, but yes it is.
Once it got shared on Reddit, people couldn’t believe it.
His stage name came from his love of Snoopy the Dog as a child (Getty/Zoran Milich)
One user took to the social media platform to say: “Savage! Literally roasted by his own mother haha,” while another commented: “Thats more of a wholesome origin that I expected.”
A third joked: “Even his own mom was like, “nah. That name is crazy. Imma gonna make up a new one…”
Meanwhile, someone else commented: “Snoop dogg as a whole is surprisingly wholesome.”
For those too young to have ever heard of Snoopy, it was a cartoon about a beagle which became popular through the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.
Every day’s a school day.
