Tha Doggfather

Rap star. Ex-con. Crack cocaine dealer. Murder Suspect. The headlines surrounding hip-hop sensation Snoop Dogg have built the man behind the music into a gangsta of mythic proportions-a stoned-out freestyling outlaw, surrounded by homies, bitches and ho's. But there's another Snoop Dogg: Street corner poet. Family man. Loyal son of Long Beach, California. Survivor Truth teller. Before the platinum albums and limos and attention-grabbing news stories, there was Calvin Broadus, a skinny kid from the kind of neighborhood America likes to forget, a kid with enough raw talent and vision to prevail over every odd stacked against him. In THA DOGGFATHER: The Times, Trials and Hardcore Truths of Snoop Dogg (William Morrow; December 1999; $23.00), The Doggfather tells his story, his way, for the very first time. From page one, Snoop tells it like it is about his struggle to rise above a system that consigned him to a destiny of poverty, crime and hopelessness on the mean streets of L.A.'s South Bay. From his love for the single mother who raised him but couldn't say no to her abusive boyfriends to his teen years living in his car and running with infamous gangs like the Rolling Twenties and the Crips, Snoop paints a searing and poignant picture of life in the 'hood. He spares no detail about his arrests for dealing crack and about the false murder rap and trial that nearly ended his meteoric career rise. There are penetrating, often sardonic, insights into the problem of racism and about the rich, white suburbanites who often pitied "the skinny black kid" but couldn't see their own cloistered unhappiness. THA DOGGFATHER is as much a chronicle of the death of hope in the ghetto-from the unity of the civil rights struggles in the sixties to the galvanizing influx of black shows and movies in the seventies to the destruction wreaked by drugs and violence in the eighties-and of the resurgence of pride with the power of the hip-hop community. Snoop's life story is populated by a vivid cast of characters-from foul-mouthed protector Aunt Mary to his best friend Warren G to the hookers, addicts and convicts who left their mark on his soul-as well as a who's who of rap, including Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight, whose Death Row Records brought street-credibility and gangland tactics into the industry's corporate suites. THA DOGGFATHER gives a behind-the-scenes look at the events, the players and the style that launched the West Coast sound and the tragedies that nearly destroyed it, and Snoop pulls no punches about the music industry that exploited African-Americans who, with rap, took back their music and their power. And finally, Snoop's story pays tribute to the redemptive strength of love with his marriage to his high school sweetheart Shantay Taylor. A devout family man, Snoop spends his time with his wife and three children, making music and trying "to increase the peace. To spread the music. To elevate and educate." Explosive, harrowing and ultimately inspirational, THA DOGGFATHER is that rare autobiography, a story so real, so suspenseful and so triumphant that it reads like bestseller fiction-but every word of it is true.