20 Years of Doggystyle

20 years ago, on November 23, 1993, hip-hop icon Snoop Doggy Dogg released his debut album, Doggystyle. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and sold 802,858 copies in its first week alone, which was the record for a debuting artist and the fastest-selling album at the time. Snoop Doggy Dogg was the new face of gangsta rap and he ushered in a new style of rap.

Doggystyle is one of my favorite rap albums of all time. I never get bored listening to the realism of Snoop Doggy Dogg’s lyrics over that G-funk style of music. Snoop’s distinctive vocal flow merged perfectly with beats produced by Dr. Dre. They were the Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson of gangsta rap. Snoop Doggy Dogg painted vivid pictures well with his lyrics on Doggystyle that it sounded cinematic. As a listener, I felt I was in a West Coast gangster movie. My favorite songs on the album are “Doggy Dogg World,” “Ain’t No Fun (If the Homies Can’t Have None),” “The Shiznit,” and “Gin and Juice”. Snoop Doggy Dogg impressed me with his debut album that I felt he was perhaps the best rapper at the time. I respect Snoop for not trying to sound or be like rappers from New York. He was something fresh that the hip-hop culture needed in the 1990s.

Today, many rap fans considered Doggystyle not only Snoop’s best album, but also one of rap’s greatest masterpieces. The music on that album is timeless, and it takes listeners back in time when G-funk was the dominant sound in rap.