mike boykin

Snoop Dogg says Death Row never sent him a single publishing check. So he bought Death Row. Now his own cousin says Snoop isn’t paying him. In the video below, Snoop explains what he earned at the top, and why he bought the label anyway. Doggystyle debuted at No. 1 in 1993 and sold more than 800,000 copies in its first week. “What is a publishing check?” he says. “We don’t know what that is.” He only got paid when he performed. His first $100,000 didn’t come from his music. It came from a malt liquor commercial. Then he signed with Master P. P drove him around Louisiana and told him to pick out a house. It was the first thing ever put in Snoop’s name. Then a truck. Then an accountant. “Death Row showed me the show,” Snoop says. “He showed me the business.” In 2021, Death Row changed hands inside a $385 million music deal. A year later, Snoop bought it. “It’s not like I stole it,” he says. “I bought it.” His cousin Daz Dillinger helped make The Chronic and Doggystyle. Snoop pays him some, Daz says, but he’s “going off bad paperwork.” Daz wants 50% of the masters. Snoop bought the old contracts along with the catalog. Paying Daz more than they say means paying out of his own pocket for deals made thirty years ago. On the Street, when you buy a company, you buy its promises too. Even the ones nobody wrote down. You finally own the label that shorted you. Your cousin says you’re shorting him. Do you hide behind the same paperwork, or pay him out of your own pocket?