Earlier this year, just days before he took the stage for the Super Bowl Halftime Show with Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and more, Snoop Dogg announced that he acquired the rights to Death Row Records. The label, which was infamously founded by The D.O.C., Dr. Dre, Suge Knight, and Dick Griffey, was the home of Tupac’s All Eyez on Me as well as Snoop’s first two solo albums: Doggystyle and Tha Doggfather. However, shortly after acquiring Death Row, Snoop decided to remove several albums in the label’s catalog from streaming services. During a recent appearance on Drink Champs, Dogg explained why.
“First thing I did was snatch all the music off those platforms traditionally known to people, because those platforms don’t pay,” he said around the 1:51:00 mark of the episode. “And those platforms get millions of millions of streams, and nobody gets paid other than the record labels.” He added, “So what I wanted to do is snatch my music off, create a platform similar to Amazon, Netflix, Hulu. It’ll be a Death Row app, and the music, in the meantime, will live in the metaverse.”
Snoop’s explanation comes after he apparently secured the rights to Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, which was released on Death Row back in 1992.
You can watch the full Drink Champs episode in the video above.