Snoop Dogg and Queen Elizabeth II. Now, that’s a collaboration we never thought we would see together. Unfortunately, it’s not a music feature from your highness. Turns out, the Queen is the reason why he’s still allowed in the United Kingdom to this day.
She stepped in amid growing pressure in 1994 to kick the rapper out of the country.
The rapper was on tour at the time, however, facing first and second murder-degree charges. He was arrested and charged with murdering an LA man in 1993.
Snoop Dogg recently opened up about this incident during an interview with DJ Whoo Kid. He says at the time, a paper ran a story with a jarring headline that read, “Kick this evil bastard out,” The Independent reports.
“They kicked me out [sic] the U.K.,” he says. “They had a picture of me on the front. I had a handcuff on one of my hands.”
But the picture people were upset with was not a mugshot, rather a photo he had taken on his own.
“The perception they had was this n***a beat a murder case and he over here doing shows?”
Your Highness Shutting It Down for Snoop Dogg
Despite the growing outcry, the one person that came to his defense was Queen Elizabeth.
“The Queen said, ‘this man has done nothing in our country. He can come,'” Snoop recalls. “When the Queen speak, bow down.”
And it appears they did just that. While there’s not a lot of documented tour history in the Grammy-award-winning artist’s early years in his career, he went on to be a frequent visitor to the U.K. with his performances.
“Thank you, Queen. I love you, baby,” he says. “The Queen. That’s my gal.”
The charges against Snoop, whose real name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr., were dropped in 1996.
He has sold more than 23 million albums in the United States and more than 35 million worldwide.
Watch a snippet of the interview below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdsBkNMLkZM&w=560&h=315]RELATED: Snoop Dogg Partners With Dunkin To Drop His D-O-Double G Sandwich This Week Only
