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How did Snoop Dogg become the face of the Olympics? TOM LEONARD investigates how the foul-mouthed, misogynist jailbird rapper bagged a front row seat in Paris - as well as a starring role in Kate and William's Team GB video
Of all the bizarre attempts to liven up the Olympics for a younger audience, surely nothing came close to the sight of long-time gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg togged up in full dressage kit, discussing the finer points of equestrianism with US 'domestic goddess' Martha Stewart, 83.
Apart from both being former jailbirds (though not cellmates), there's little to explain the unlikely friendship that has developed since he appeared on her cookery show to make mashed potatoes in 2008. But they've been dutifully plugging each other's business ventures ever since.
Snoop, whose real name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus, admitted to Martha he was scared of horses as he gingerly fed a carrot to one of them in the Olympic paddock at Versailles.
Later, the pair watched UK competitor Becky Moody compete, marvelling as she made her mount, Jagerbomb, perform the complex sideways move known as a half-pass.
'We call that swervin' in the hood,' mused Snoop. Actually, he'd previously called it the rather less appropriate 'Crip walking' – a reference to a murderous street gang, the Crips, of which Snoop was once a member.
Gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg togged up in full dressage kit, admitted to US 'domestic goddess' Martha Stewart, 83 that he was scared of horses at Paris 2024
The American contributed to a video posted on social media on Sunday in which the Prince and Princess of Wales, along with various sport-related celebrities, heaped praise on Team GB
Pictured: Snoop's mugshot issued by Los Angeles Police in 1993
He'd made the remark four years ago when he joined black comic Kevin Hart on a TV show to riff on footage from the Tokyo Olympics.
That sort of light-hearted banter, rather than the more informed commentary that's traditionally been a feature of the Olympics, was clearly what broadcaster NBC was looking for from him over the past two weeks.
From carrying the Olympic flame through the streets of Paris suburb Saint-Denis to swimming – very badly – in a pool with ex-champion Michael Phelps, Snoop, 52, has been unavoidable.
The American even contributed to a video posted on social media on Sunday in which the Prince and Princess of Wales, along with various sport-related celebrities, heaped praise on Team GB.
'Thank you Great Britain, on behalf of big Snoop Dogg, the prince and his lovely wife,' said the man who has previously admitted to being a fan of Norwich City football club and Coronation Street.
Snoop has become such a ubiquitous cheerleader for the Paris Games that one critic enthusiastically described him as the 'Santa Claus of the Olympics', a cuddly unofficial mascot bringing joy and comedy to a sporting competition hardly famous for its levity.
But as fans enthused about his willingness to send himself up and to show what appeared to be a genuine fascination in a wide range of sports, the Snoop euphoria was somewhat tarnished by the revelation that he may have been inspired less by the Olympic spirit than by the huge amounts of cash he was being paid.
According to several sources, official US Olympics broadcaster NBC paid Snoop $500,000 (£390,000) a day for his contributions. The $8 million total over the full 16 days of the games reportedly didn't include his expenses nor pre-production work. Neither NBC nor the rapper have commented on his remuneration.
Leaving aside the matter of any financial inducement, it's an extraordinary transformation for a music mogul who for years not only extolled murderous violence and brutal misogyny in his music but boasted that, unlike other hip-hop stars whose pimp persona was entirely manufactured, he really did farm out young women for sex when he was on tour and kept ten on a support bus.
Snoop carrying the Olympic torch as part of the Paris 2024 relay on the day of the opening ceremony
Snoop with Billie Eilish and Dr. Dre at the LA28 Olympic handover celebration
Snoop performing onstage at the Yankee Stadium in New York in August 2023
Snoop smokes while performing in Melbourne at the 2007 Good Vibrations Festival
He has, to be fair, sought publicly to distance himself from his unpleasant past for years. The father of four nowadays celebrates being a grandfather rather than an ex-criminal and, since 2007, has appeared in a reality TV series about his life.
Tirelessly entrepreneurial, he has acted on screen, produced his own wine and written a cookery book, From Crook To Cook.
Indeed, Snoop – who has sold more than 30 million records and is estimated to be worth $160 million – is no stranger to shameless reinventions. In 2018, he announced he had become a born-again Christian, although sceptics noted he'd joined the Nation of Islam in 2009 and only three years later became a Rastafarian, announcing that he was 'Bob Marley reincarnated'.
He had swapped rap for reggae and said he should be addressed as 'Snoop Lion' in deference to his Rastafarian roots.
The reggae world was not impressed and, two years later, he quietly to returned to his old persona for his next album.
But he certainly shared Marley's love of 'weed', in Snoop's case reportedly smoking 30 joints a day. No wonder interviewers sometimes remark that you smell him before you see him.
As more US states legalised cannabis, he invested in it, including buying a stake in a British marijuana research firm that's listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Born in 1971, Snoop was raised in a rough neighbourhood of Long Beach, California. His father left his mother (who is said to have nicknamed him Snoop because he looked like the famous dog in the Peanuts cartoon strip) when he was only three months old.
She took him to her Baptist church where he sang in the choir and played piano. It didn't last.
By the age of 12 he was no longer singing gospel songs on Sundays but rapping. In his teens he fell in with the wrong crowd and started selling drugs.
He joined the Rolling 20 Crips, a chapter of the Crips, a large and very violent African-American street gang founded in Los Angeles in 1969.
Shortly after graduating from high school in 1989, he was arrested for trying to sell cocaine to an undercover police officer.
The rapper watching the men's basketball quarter final match between USA and Brazil next to player A'ja Wilson
The American rapper performing in Ahoy Rotterdam as part of his Autumn 2023 tour
Snoop Dogg wears an outfit bearing his name while onstage at the Pine Knob Music Theatre in Clarkson, Michigan in July 2023
The 6ft 4in hoodlum was in and out of prison for drugs and gun offences over the next few years. And it was during one of his spells behind bars that fellow members of the Crips encouraged him to become a professional rapper.
It was sound commercial advice. He became a superstar of gangsta rap, a music genre that he helped become synonymous with violent posturing and ugly, profanity-laden and woman-hating lyrics.
Liberal-minded music critics, terrified of sounding racist, were loath to be too critical of gangsta rap – in Snoop's case, even when he released a song, Ain't No Fun (If The Homies Can't Have None), which was a thinly veiled homage to gang rape. He coolly insisted it was simply a love song 'for the ladies'.
Snoop's notoriety only fuelled his popularity. A Newsweek story at the height of his popularity asked: 'When is rap too violent?'.
Snoop's first album, Doggystyle, complete with an innuendo-laden album cover and misogynistic lyrics, came out in 1993 and sold 800,000 copies in its first week.
It was released on a hip-hop record label, Death Row (which he now owns), that has long been plagued by controversy due to its hiring of gang members and its connection with gang violence including murders.
Despite habitually referring to women in his lyrics as 'ho's' (slang for whores) and 'bitches', Snoop has been married to his childhood sweetheart Shante Taylor since 1997, although there have been a few bumps along the way.
He filed for divorce in 2004, only for the couple to renew their wedding vows in 2008 on his reality show, Snoop Dogg's Father Hood.
Even as Snoop's musical star soared and other performers moved away from the ugliness of gangsta rap, he continued to be linked to crime and to celebrate it in his music.
In 1993, he was charged with being an accessory in the fatal shooting of a member of a rival gang, who'd allegedly been killed by one of the star's bodyguards.
Prosecutors said Snoop had been driving the car from which the gun was fired. Despite the charge, which was later dismissed, he was controversially allowed to tour Britain. A tabloid headline reacted by proclaiming: 'Kick this evil b*****d out'.
Snoop subsequently – and extraordinarily – claimed that the Queen personally intervened over moves to keep him out of Britain. 'The Queen said, 'This man has done nothing in our country. He can come,',' he told an interviewer two years ago.
Snoop watching athletics at the Stade de France. According to several sources, official US Olympics broadcaster NBC paid Snoop $500,000 (£390,000) a day for his contributions
Snoop holding the Olympic torch during the relay on July 28
In the same interview, he also claimed the Queen had alluded to the fact that Princes William and Harry were fans of his music.He says he and the princes are longtime friends, telling the Guardian in 2015: 'They love my music, and it is what it is. There's a mutual love and respect.'
But beneath the public charm and royal fans – real or imagined – music industry insiders have long claimed that Snoop has a very unpleasant side and can cut up very rough if crossed.
In 2005, he and others were sued for assaulting a fan on stage, after allegedly failing to intervene as his bodyguards beat the victim unconscious.
In 2006, he and members of his entourage were arrested after being turned away from British Airways' First Class lounge at Heathrow. They got into a fight with police, which resulted in seven officers being injured, and vandalised a duty free shop.
The Home Office subsequently decided Snoop would be denied entry to the UK for the forseeable future. That ban was lifted in 2010.
After it emerged that some of his entourage were convicted Crips members, in 2007, he was given a three-year suspended sentence and 800 hours of community service after pleading no contest to two felony charges of drug and gun possession by a convicted felon.
He's been in trouble with police as recently as 2015, when he was arrested in Sweden for illegal drugs use. He accused officers of racial profiling.
For all of the chaos and criminality in his past, Olympics viewers discovered Snoop Dogg's charm goes a long way. As he signed off from reporting on the Paris Olympics, his last words for NBC were to predict that the LA games will be 'like this but super-sized'. And that, one suspects, means we'll be seeing even more of the super-sized rapper.