Since time immemorial, rap music has typically been laced with vulgar and explicit lyrics. But some people have long complained about such content and its negative implications.
So when Dionne Warwick took issue with some artists who used misogynistic lyrics in the 1990s, she decided to take action by confronting them face to face. Those artists included Snoop Dogg and Tupac.
According to PEOPLE, Snoop Dogg touched on that encounter in a new CNN Films documentary titled Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over. The 51-year-old rapper said Warwick summoned him as well as other rappers to her residence to reprimand them over their misogynistic lyrics.
Snoop Dogg recalled the respected 82-year-old entertainer told them to come to her residence by 7 am. The rapper said that because the invitation made them feel tense, they arrived at Warwick’s residence a bit earlier.
And though the Gin and Juice rapper had made a name for himself during that period, he said he still felt “scared and shook up.” “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 said.
When the meeting started, Warwick first told the rappers to call her a “bitch” – a slang word typically used to refer to women in rap songs. “These kids are expressing themselves, which they’re entitled to do,” Warwick said. “However, there’s a way to do it.”
The Don’t Make Me Over singer said she then told the rappers, “You guys are all going to grow up. You’re going 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?”
Snoop Dogg said the conversation made him evaluate his character at the time. “She was checking me at a time when I thought we couldn’t be checked,” he recalled. “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.”
The rapper also said the encounter caused him to change his style of music. “I made it a point to put records of joy — me uplifting everybody and nobody dying and everybody living,” he revealed. “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.”
The award-winning singer also touched on the encounter at her home in a previous interview on The Real. “They felt that I was, as they said, ‘dissing them,’” Warwick said. “I wanted them to know that they were dealing with someone that — first of all, if I didn’t care about you, you would not have been invited to my home.”
“They all kind of knew that I was quite serious. We had something to talk about,” she recalled. “I was giving them a spanking, and they wanted to know why I was spanking them.”