Snoop Dogg has three No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in his career. While two of them, Akon’s “I Wanna Love You” (2006) and Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” (2010), only see him as a featured artist, his first chart-topper ever was released with him as the lead artist.
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In September 2004, Snoop connected with Pharrell Williams for “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” a lead single for the former’s seventh studio album R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece. Soon after its release, the song took the world by storm, thanks to Snoop’s slick hook and Williams and his other half Chad Hugo’s energetic instrumental.
But, although the track seems like a fun-loving, eccentric radio bop, Snoop recently revealed that the recording process was quite competitive. During an interview with Audible for their brand new podcast series Words + Music, Snoop discussed how he and Williams went to work on “Drop It Like It’s Hot.”
First, Snoop explained that Williams did not even provide him with a full beat to rap over at first, leaving him to interpret what it would eventually sound like.
“He in the back with the keyboards, it’s just him and the engineer. He ain’t even got the beat all the way made,” Snoop said. “This how this n****a get down, he don’t say words, he just (mimics Pharrell’s wordless vocalizations), so it’s my job to make that shit make sense!”
Then, when recording his verse on the song, Williams had Snoop shook. Impressed and jealous by how superb Williams’ performance was, Snoop knew he had to kick it up a notch.
“This n***a done took the bar all the way [up]… I cannot let Pharrell out-rap me on my motherfucking song!”
With Williams handling the track’s first verse, Snoop had responsibility for the chorus and the last two verses. But, after Snoop initially wrote the third verse, Williams had him re-write it because he disapproved.
“‘That third verse … that ain’t it’,” Snoop said Williams told him.
So, after re-working the verse for 20 minutes, Snoop came back and recorded the vocals that would eventually end up on the final recording of the song.
Continuing in his discussion with Audible, Snoop expressed gratitude to Williams for pushing him to be great, and likened his palette to his good friend and frequent producer Dr. Dre, who he called his “worst critic on all of [his] music at the time.”
“That’s what I mean about, ‘I like to be produced,’” Snoop said. “[Dr. Dre] don’t like nothing!”
But, that was not the case for “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” According to Snoop, who talked about the song on the phone with Dre shortly after its release, even he could not deny the song’s excellence.
“I’m scared he gon’ come and say he don’t like it!” Snoop exclaimed. “[But, he called me and said], ‘N***a, this shit right here off the hook! This shit bomb, n***a! Y’all did that!’”
Williams and Snoop went on to collaborate twice more on “Beautiful” with Charlie Wilson (2005) and “That Girl” (2006).
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