Thirty years removed from his 1993 debut album Doggystyle, produced by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg is running it back with his beloved producer for another collaborative album.
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Last week (June 8), Snoop posted a photo to Instagram that sees him in the studio working with Dr. Dre. Succinctly captioning the post “Comin soon,” Snoop signaled to fans that they should start preparing for he and Dre’s upcoming LP Missionary, although he did not assign a release date for it.
Snoop first mentioned Missionary back in October of last year during an interview for the Stephen A. Smith Show. While speaking on the podcast, he emphasized that he and Dre had already been crafting the project for two months and were expecting to finish before 2022 ended.
“I’ma tell you this, you’re the first one to hear this: me and Dr. Dre have been working on an album for the past two months,” Snoop told Smith. “And it’ll be done in November. It’s produced by Dr. Dre. It’s our 30th anniversary to Doggystyle. And the name of the album is Missionary.”
The album’s title, much like Doggystyle, is also inspired by a sex-related allusion. Although it will be Snoop’s first full-length output of 2023, it will be the fifth project uploaded to digital streaming platforms during this millennium, following up LPs like Algorithm (2021), Bacc on Death Row (2022), and Snoop Cube 40 $hort (2022).
Evidently, though, the legendary tag team was not able to complete the album by last November. But, releasing Missionary this year would probably be more fitting, considering it will be Snoop’s 20th overall album while also celebrating the 30-year anniversary of his first studio album.
Earlier this year, we at American Songwriter revisited some of the best songs that Snoop wrote for Dre throughout his career as a producer and rapper. While it’s currently unclear if Dre will provide vocals on Missionary along with production, there is undoubtedly mountains of evidence to prove that Snoop and Dre go together just as well as any duo in hip-hop history.
Photo by Sarah Morris/Getty Images
