In the 1990s, Snoop Dogg faced the challenge of balancing fame and fatherhood as his music career took off. He released his chart-topping debut album, Doggystyle, in November 1993, and welcomed his first child, Corde Broadus, in August 1994.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Snoop fondly recalled the early days of balancing fame and fatherhood and how he received support from his friend and collaborator Tupac Shakur during that time.
“I was working on Tha Doggfather,” Snoop, 52, said, referring to his sophomore album, which eventually came out in 1996. “So when [Corde] was old enough able to pee and all that other s—, I started taking him to the studio with me. … So I’m raising him around all of the homies.”
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During this time, Shakur met Snoop’s son and began helping to raise him. Shakur even reminded Snoop to feed Corde, adding that even McDonald’s was better than nothing.
“Tupac loved him. It’s like his nephew. Tupac was a better dad than me,” Snoop remembered. “We’ve been up here [in the recording studio for] three hours and we ain’t got him nothing to eat. It’s like I’m up here rapping and s—, I’m not being a father. [He was] training me.”
Shakur’s time with Corde and Snoop was cut short when Shakur was fatally shot in a drive-by shooting in September 1996, following a Mike Tyson boxing match in Las Vegas. He died six days later at the age of 25. The following year, Snoop welcomed his second son, Cordell Broadus.
Drawing on the advice he had learned from his late friend Shakur, Snoop continued to strive to be a better father to both Corde, now 30, and Cordell, 27.
“I put them in football and I watched them work together. Football helped me to become a real good father because I was around other men who were single parents, or either had a great wife, or was a grandfather raising their son’s kids — so much I could learn from them,” Snoop recalled.
Shortly after his sons began playing football, Snoop founded the Snoop Youth Football League in 2005, providing inner-city kids with the opportunity to play the sport.
“Then from that it was like, ‘I’m getting real good at being a father,’ because coaching some of the roughest kids in the city, their parents got backgrounds that you wouldn’t imagine and we making these kids into something special,” Snoops explained.
“And then my kids are growing up right with them to see how tough it is in these societies and how they’re not living there,” he continued. “They just go there to play football but they don’t have to deal with it, and it helped them understand life. So football and all that was a blessing on me being a father because it taught me how to be a father.”
Several players from Snoop’s Youth Football League have progressed to become college athletes or NFL stars, including Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud.
