That’s what Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre have on their hands, thanks in no small part to Super Bowl Sunday.
On Super Bowl Sunday, the rap legends performed the 1999 classic, “Still D.R.E.” — which came off of Dre’s second solo album, “2001.” At the time of its release, “Still D.R.E.” did fairly well, but it fell just short of the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot Rap charts, peaking at No. 11 on Nov. 20, 1999. It did, however, remain on the charts for 21 weeks.
Then in 2011, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre uploaded the song to YouTube. According to Billboard, the Hype Williams-directed video — which featured cameos from the likes of Eminem, Funkmaster Flex, and Warren G, to name but a few — started climbing with its views.
That didn’t mean that the pair didn’t know how to make the song make money for them. They subsequently licensed out the track to “Training Day” — the film that gave Denzel Washington a Best Actor Oscar — and to the “Grand Theft Auto” video games.
Fast-forward to the Super Bowl, when the pair closed out the Halftime Show with a performance of “Still D.R.E.”
That caused another rocket climb for Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, and as of Feb. 16, the YouTube video had hit more than a billion views on the streaming platform, per a Billboard report.
And there’s more: “Still D.R.E.” is climbing the Billboard Global 200 charts, more than 20 years after its initial release. As of this writing, the song is sitting comfortably at No. 167 on the charts, along with Dr. Dre and Eminem’s track “Gospel,” which is sitting at No. 183. This also marks the first time that Snoop Dogg has hit the Billboard Global 200 charts, too.
The Surprising Origins of 'Still D.R.E.'
As AfroTech previously reported, former Death Row capo Marion “Suge” Knight once bragged about allegedly having Jay-Z “robbed” when he came to Los Angeles to record a song with Death Row artists. He even poked fun at Snoop and Dr. Dre for claims of fighting to keep Hova safe while he was there.
But, as it turns out, Dre and Snoop had reasons for protecting Hova.
As NME reports, Jay-Z was the true mastermind behind the track. The Doggfather claims that Hova took his pen to paper and wrote out the entire track in 30 minutes flat.
“He wrote Dre’s shit and my s—t and it was flawless,” he said. “It was ‘Still D.R.E.’ and it was Jay-Z and he wrote the whole f—king song. Jay-Z is a great writer, to begin with for himself, so imagine him striking it for someone he truly loves and appreciates. He loves Dr. Dre and that’s what his pen showed you, that I can’t write for you if I don’t love you.”
