Doggystyle
Doggystyle is the debut album by US gangsta rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg. It was released on November 23, 1993, through the U.S. label Death Row Records. The album ranked number one on the Billboard 200, and Rolling Stone lists it at number 14 on the "100 Best Albums of the Nineties".
The album title is a play on words from the stage name "Snoop Doggy Dogg" and a sex position, known in German as Hündchenstellung. The album belongs to the early G-Funk and West Coast hip-hop of the then increasingly strong rap scene and was the breakthrough for the rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, who later changed his stage name to Snoop Dogg, as the naming rights for "Snoop Doggy Dogg" are held by Death Row Records.
Background
The success of the album was largely due to ex-N.W.A member Dr. Dre, on whose album The Chronic Snoop Dogg had made several guest appearances a year earlier. Since Dre was in a dispute with his former colleague Eazy-E at the time, there are also several side blows against him on the album. During the promotional phase of the album, Snoop Dogg had to stand trial for accessory to murder. The charges were dropped in 1996 due to lack of evidence, which, in addition to a planned tour, also delayed album production on his follow-up album Tha Doggfather.
Snoop Dogg, 2006
Production
The album was recorded at Death Row Records studios in Long Beach in early 1993. The two hip-hop groups 213 and Tha Dogg Pound were chosen as features. 213 recorded the track Ain't no Fun, which was actually planned for Nate Dogg's debut album. With Tha Dogg Pound, Snoop Doggy Dogg recorded the tracks Serial Killa, For All My Niggaz and My Bitches and the single Doggy Dogg World. The former also included a feature from RBX, while the latter was a collaboration with The Lady of Rage. Other features included The Lady of Rage on G-Funk Intro and Mr. Malik aka Lil' Hershey Loc on Pump Pump. The album was created within a year and features mostly slow, bass-heavy music attributed to the G-Funk style of music pioneered by Dr. Dre. An exception is, for example, the song Gz and Hustlaz, which has 100 bpm.
