I was sitting in a restaurant called Sweetgreen on Beverly Blvd having a locally sourced organic salad when something caught my eye. It was a quote from Calvin Broadus Jr, which is the real name of the rapper Snoop Dogg. It said “It ain’t no fun if the homies can’t have none”, which is an innocuous enough thing to print on your wall.
Sweetgreen is a new age type of establishment which markets itself to the socially conscious. Think yoga mats and Priuses and people who hire other people to raise their children. In fact their manifesto makes this very clear. The fact that a salad restaurant would feel the need to have a manifesto speaks volumes.
I failed to see how this jibed with the ideals of the rapper Snoop Dogg, a former gang member who mentions murdering someone in most of his songs, paired with weed glorification and overtly misogynistic lyrics such as “Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks, lick on these nuts and suck the dick.” Charming.
Sweetgreen was started by some Georgetown graduates with lofty ideals, to the point that they print them on their wall. They, in fact, have dictated their Core Values, which “… embody our culture, spirit and dedication to doing what’s right. They keep us aligned and help us make decisions about everything from the food we serve to the way we design our stores.”
You’re making salads, get over yourselves. The salads are really good by the way. But if you want to talk sustainability, I’ll tell you what’s not sustainable: Killing people with guns. Like what Snoop raps about. “I’m strapped with my Glock on your block. And ready to let loose on the first imitator that I spot.” For example. That’s almost the opposite of sustainable. If everyone behaved the way that Snoop Dogg behaved, or claims to have behaved in his songs, we’d all be dead. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
The Snoop Dogg quote on the wall of Sweetgreen is from a song called “Ain’t No Fun (If The Homies Can’t Have None) from the 1993 album Doggystyle. This was Snoop’s first solo album and he was portraying the character of an actual pimp during this point in his career. A guy who psychologically manipulates hookers through physical violence. There was an element of minstrelsy to the whole thing. I would guess nobody took it seriously. But, still.
These are some lyrics from the song quoted on the wall: “When I met you last night baby. Before you opened up your gap. I had respect for ya lady. But now I take it all back. Next time I’m feeling kinda horny. You can come on over, and I’ll break you of. And if you can’t fuck, that day, baby. Just lay back, and open your mouth. Cause I have never met a girl. That I love in the whole wide world.”
To be fair, that was Nate Dogg doing a guest verse and not Snoop but he’s still guilty by association. Nate Dogg is dead now. Hopefully he met a woman prior to his demise. Here is a lyric from Snoop on said track: “Hoes recognize, niggaz do too, ’cause when bitches get scandalous and pull a voodoo.” Fairly tame for Snoop’s standards, but you get the point.
I would guess that most of the people who eat at Sweetgreen, along with its proprietors, are the type of people who are easily offended. They wouldn’t much appreciate you saying that homeless people are lazy or that terrorists should be put to death. They might be the first to demonize Bill Burr’s comments about transexuals or tell you that the portrayal of Asian Americans on network television is ‘racist.’
Yet they’re apparently cool with this black guy who talks about killing people and smacking bitches. Cool to the point they’re putting his lyrics on their wall. So even if they are of my mindset that Snoop Dogg is a harmless clown and just basically making jokes, why?
My first thought was that this was sort of racist. I wondered if American society would ever accept a white rapper who portrayed himself as a literal pimp and talked about killing people and calling women bitches and hoes incessantly. These silly black people. That kind of thing.
Then I realized it’s much more simple than that. Sweetgreen is in the business of making salads and making money. Not saving the fucking world. Snoop Dogg is a successful dude. Snoop Dogg made it. There’s no arguing that.
When me, or Bill Burr, or Daniel Tosh, or Jonah Hill, or your friend Dale, or whoever it is, might say something that the Westside LA status quo doesn’t agree with, they will inevitably be chastised by the feminist banner waving Coexist bumper sticker sporting Sweetgreen crowd. Yet Snoop appears to have some sort of immunity.
It’s because your friend Dale hasn’t made it. And Bill Burr hasn’t yet made it to the level that Snoop Dogg has made it. And once you make it, you can do whatever the fuck you want, because the people talking shit about you also want to make it, and it turns out their belief system is pretty fucking malleable when it comes to paying a mortgage. That’s why people these days are obsessed with some dog who was abused and don’t give a fuck about a hospital of civilians that the U.S. destroyed in a drone strike.
Which brings this all back to Capitalism. You want to sell salads. Stop pretending it’s more than that.
Once you become a cultural icon through a perversion of values people don’t blink an eye at your stupid thoughts. And once you’re elected president you get to kill people and nobody really cares.
They just pat themselves on the back for voting for the black dude.
If you boil it down, lionizing Snoop while giving shit to everyone else is picking on the weak and that’s not an especially sensible value, but people are nasty hypocrites.
So, I implore you to eat your delicious salads and shut the fuck up.
In the words of Snoop Dogg,
“Murder was the case that they gave me.”