In CNN+’s film Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over, Snoop Dogg made an appearance where he spoke on an encounter he had with the legendary singer back in the ’90’s.
The Grammy-winning icon, known for her unapologetically hilarious tweets and stating her opinion no holds barred, shared that she once had to confront the gangster rappers of that time. She hosted an early morning meeting with Death Row members Snoop and Suge Knight and several other rappers at her home. “7 a.m.,” she recalled. “Not a minute before, not a minute after.” The rappers arrived at her home at 6:52 a.m.
Taken back at first, Warwick shared that the rappers accused her of trying to “diss” their music, to which she corrected them to use the full word “disrespect.”
“These kids are expressing themselves, which they’re entitled to do,” Warwick said. “However, there’s a way to do it.”
Warwick, who made history as the first solo Black female artist to win a Grammy in contemporary vocal performance, told them: “You guys are all going to grow up. You’re going to have families. You’re going to have children. You’re going to have little girls and one day that little girl is going to look at you and say, ‘Daddy, did you really say that? Is that really you?’ What are you going to say?'”
She added, “I think it got through to them.”
“We were kind of like scared and shook up,” Snoop Dogg recalled about the invite during the film. “We’re powerful right now, but she’s been powerful forever. Thirty-some years in the game, in the big home with a lot of money and success.”
He then shared that immediately following their greeting, the seasoned singer demanded the rappers to “call her a bi**h,” to her face, as many of them have used the deragatory word in their music.
“She was checking me at a time when I thought we couldn’t be checked,” the west coast legend went on. “We were the most gangsta as you could be but that day at Dionne Warwick’s house, I believe we got out-gangstered that day. I made it a point to put [out] records of joy — me uplifting everybody and nobody dying and everybody living,” in which he did just that on his 1996 album Tha Doggfather.
Reflecting on the man he is today — a father of three and grandfather of five — Snoop expressed that he hopes he’s made Dionne proud.
“Dionne, I hope I became the jewel that you saw when I was the little, dirty rock that was in your house. I hope I’m making you proud.”
Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over premiered on Sunday, (Jan. 1) exclusively on the streaming service CNN+.