Snoop Dogg made more of an impact on Hip Hop culture than 2Pac, at least according to Friday actor Faizon Love.
The colorful comedian sat down with The Art of Dialogue for a recent interview where he was asked to explain his previous comments that Snoop was “bigger” than 2Pac at the height of his career.
“When Snoop came out, he was the biggest rapper ever,” he said. “And then he was coming down. ‘Pac was in trouble […] Snoop Dogg, when he came out had muthafuckas waiting around the corner at every record [store]. ‘Pac was in jail.
“So when ‘Pac came to Death Row, Snoop was still the biggest rapper ever, and he was facing a murder case. Ever. That’s what I was saying. I don’t know when ‘Pac passed, he grew more.”
When asked what album release was the “biggest” — Snoop Dogg’s 1993 debut Doggystyle or 2Pac’s 1996 double album All Eyez On Me, Love confidently answered: “Snoop had the biggest [album release]. You can look that up. They can tell you what Snoop sold that week. Snoop had whites and Blacks. 2Pac had n-ggas. Snoop was a phenomenon.”
After a quick Google search, it turned out Love was right. Doggystyle sold more than 806,000 in its opening week, while All Eyez On Me reeled in around 566,000.
“That’s the first week,” Love said. “Snoop was on MTV, music awards, all that shit. ‘Pac was in jail. I think the only award show ‘Pac did was Soul Train. People was waiting outside of Tower Records, any place that sold records, white people and Black people were camping out. I was like, ‘Damn! What the fuck!’”
Snoop Dogg went on to sell more than 37 million albums worldwide and is still going, while 2Pac has sold approximately 75 million despite his 1996 murder.
In the same interview, Love addressed the Lizzo and Aries Spears controversy after the former Mad TV actor compared the Grammy Award-winning singer to “the shit emoji” and “a plate of mashed potatoes.”
“The comments in itself are stupid,” he said. “I mean, Lizzo is a phenomenon and she’s really talented, and he’s not so talented. He’s got one gear. He’s a, ‘Yo, son.’ But if you know the story of Aries Spears; he’s the guy we saw on a Def Jam as a kid. He was 13, 14 years old. They flew him out to Hollywood, thinking he was going to be the next Eddie Murphy and ‘wamp, wamp.’ He was so angry.
“I was going to slap the shit out of him one time. Like, this dumb muthafucka. At the comedy store, so many muthafuckas was gonna whoop his ass because he was this cocky kid. He would get deals — him and Dave Chappelle would get all these deals — South of Sunset was one of the shows, and they would go nowhere like ‘wamp, wamp.’”
