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The Next Episode makes one of the two great duos featuring Dr Dre and Snoop Dog, the other one being Still DRE.
Dr Dre Snoop Dogg, Kurupt, Nate Dogg – The Next Episode – Rap music video
Dr Dre Snoop Dogg, Kurupt, Nate Dogg – The Next Episode – Lyrics
Intro
La-da-da-da-dahh
It’s the motherfuckin D-O-double-G (SNOOP DOGG!)
La-da-da-da-dahh
You know I’m mobbin with the D.R.E.
(YEAH YEAH YEAH
What what what what?
(So blaze the weed up then!)
Blaze it up, blaze it up!
(Just blaze that shit up nigga, yeah, ‘sup Snoop??)Verse 1 – Snoop Dogg
Top Dogg, bite em all, nigga burn the shit up
D-P-G-C my nigga turn that shit up
C-P-T, L-B-C, yeah we hookin back up
And when they bang this in the club baby you got to get up
Thug niggaz drug dealers yeah they givin it up
Lowlife, yo’ life, boy we livin it up
Takin chances while we dancin in the party fo’ sho’
Slip my hoe a forty-fo’ and she got in the back do’
Bitches lookin at me strange but you know I don’t care
Step up in this motherfucker just a-swangin my hair
Bitch quit talkin, Crip walk, stay down with the set
Take a bullet with some dick and take this dope from this jet
Out of town, put it down for the Father of Rap
And if yo’ ass get cracked, bitch shut yo’ trap
Come back, get back, that’s the part of success
If you believe in the S you’ll be relievin your stressInterlude – Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre
La-da-da-da-dahh
It’s the motherfuckin D.R.E. (Dr. Dre MOTHERFUCKER!)
La-da-da-da-dahhh
You know I’m mobbin with the D-O-double-GVerse 2 – Dr Dre
Straight off the fuckin streets of C-P-T
King of the beats you ride to em in your Fleet (Fleetwood)
Or Coupe DeVille rollin on dubs
How you feelin whoopty=whoop nigga whut?
Dre and Snoop chronic’ed out in the ‘llac
With Doc in the back, sippin on ‘gnac (yeah)
Clip in the strap, dippin through hoods (what hoods?)
Compton, Long Beach, Inglewood!
South Central out to the Westside (wessyde)
It’s California Love, this California bud got a nigga gang of pub
I’m on one, I might bail up in the Century Club
With my jeans on, and my team strong
Get my drink on, and my smoke on
Then go home with, somethin to poke on (whassup bitch?)
Loc it’s on for the two-triple-oh!
Comin real, it’s the next episode…Outro – Nate Dogg
Hold up, waiiiiiiit
For my niggaz who be thinkin we soft
We don’t, playyy
We gon’ rock it til the wheels fall off
Hold up, heyyy
For my niggaz who be actin too bold
Take a seeaaaaaat
Hope you ready for the next episode, heyyyeyyy….
…smoke weed everday!
Dr Dre Snoop Dogg, Kurupt, Nate Dogg – The Next Episode – Lyrics analysis, explanation & meaning
In this analysis, we’ll use the concept we teach in our 4 scenario courses.
Intro
La-da-da-da-dahh
Of course, putting something else than intelligible words as opening text, makes an effect, says something. This intro reflects some good mood, positioning the song in a register similar to CALIFORNIA LOVE : some not too contesting, rather happy, optimistic, sexy hip-hop. We are far from the sinister or negatively aggressive or sad mood of hits like NWA’s STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON, Coolio’s GANGSTA’S PARADISE, or The Notorious BIG’s WHO SHOT YA?
It’s the motherfuckin DO-double-G (SNOOP DOGG!)
Here we are back to this creature we learnt to know from close in rap lyrics: a motherfucker! He gives us his artistic nickname, as part of a practice that resembles that of graffiti: the artwork is the name of the artist, his signature.
Signing one’s artwork straight away, it is already a long time tradition, a code of rap lyrics, which fundamentally consists of saying “Yo, it’s me speaking now“.
This artist name sounds at once:
- childish – everyone knows Snoopy, the cartoon character
- quirky – it’s a funny name for a gangster as for a rapper
- “Pop” – it’s a “ready-made”, a name that was found, appropriated, a parody of mass culture, as in the art of the 60s (Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein recycling comics…)
- ghetto – the word dogg has a “g” in excess, it is written by a dunce, and rappers, as we saw it with the “muthaphuckkin’ G’s” of Eazy-E, like to massacre spelling, as a rematch after school humiliation
- gangster – yes, gangster, because paradoxically, if you do not want to end up in prison when you live illegally, then you’d better tell everyone around that your name is Snoopy the dog, rather than distribute copies of your identity card, including to your victims. In short, this ridiculous, generic name is the ideal hiding place for crime – like passing a kilo of weed in the teddy bear of a baby, in the pram, at the airport.
In short, this name looks like nothing, but it is rich in meaning, and it will lead to various puns.
By the way, the real name of this singer is Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. He could have signed his real name, but he obviously preferred that scene name that hides his true identity. This real name itself could, by its strangeness, influence the nickname, because it is composed of names that do not really fit together:
- Calvin comes from the Swiss Protestant preacher, Jean Calvin
- Cordozar sounds Spanish, which is weird for an African-American
- Broadus sounds both Anglo-Saxon (“broad“) and Latin (“-us“), which a third time does not stick to the identity of an African-American.
I emphasize it because it is a problem of substance of the African-American artists in the USA: they have a hard time owning a proper name, since they are descendants of people torn from their origins, as slaves they were named after their masters, that’s why their names often sound quite absurd, because borrowed from all but African cultures – while the singers of the privileged white world have no trouble assuming their civil status as rock or variety artists – you can be John Lennon, Lou Reed, Britney Spears, but it’s harder to be Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. So fuck it, he’s not a slave, he’s Snoop Dogg.
La-da-da-da-dahh
You know I’m mobbin with the DRE
The signature extends to DRE, whose real name is Andre Young (a french first name and an English family name… another slave name !) Snoop finds here a new way to say a name that’s already a code – DRE is somehow the grandiose version of Dre (as if it was the acronym for a big, important thing like the USA, the UN or NATO) which is the familiar and shortened version of Andre. This usual first name of poor African-Americans has become a multimillionaire artist’s name.
I’m mobbin’ : to mob is to mobilize for a cause. So it’s a metaphor, Snoop would be mobilizing, implicitly, for a big cause, that of Dre’s music.
(YEAH YEAH YEAH
You know who’s back up in this MOTHERFUCKER!)
What what what what?
Snoop has a very oral style, he plays on it knowingly. He is one of the most playful songwriters, he plays with words, sounds, rhythms, intonations, double meanings, seizing shortcuts etc. This style resonates well with the cartoon side of his name: he raps like a teenager joker.
(So blaze the weed up then!)
Blaze it up, blaze it up!
(Just blaze that shit up nigga, yeah, ‘sup Snoop??)
You see, it’s in this kind of situation that it’s better to be called Snoop. If there are some “I-love-war-on-drugs” cops or citizens around the corner, it’s better not to shout your real name when you’re rolling your big joints…
Verse 1 – Snoop Dogg
Top dogg, bite ’em all, nigga burn the shit up
Snoop starts strong!
Top Dogg is a pun that mixes the deliberately faulty name of the singer, and the concept of “top dog”, dominant dog.
By the way, this concept is smoky. Dogs’ behavior comes from the behavior of wolves, and the behavior of wolves, their social hierarchy in particular, has nothing to do with what Snoop Dogg thinks by calling himself a Top Dogg. Snoop Dogg mistakenly imagines that dogs and wolves work like him, a citizen of an ultra-competitive market economy. But dogs and wolves are considerably more altruistic and less competitive than Californian artists: they put the strongest ones at the head and queue of their pack to protect the weakest ones. In fact Snoop Dogg peddles there an old scientific error, this social Darwinism which inspired Nazism in Germany and the white racial policy in the United States, this social Darwinism which claimed to have found a “law of the strongest” at work in human societies, has been driven out of science since decades, but has remained as a cliche in many people who still believe it’s a fact, while we know it’s not.
Top Dogg can also refer to the doggy style sexual position, then in this case Snoop as a man would necessarily be the top dog, the dog above – the expression taking on an obvious misogynistic connotation.
Bite ’em all: the audience implicitly hears other words here, we understand that bite them all is the canine equivalent of kill them all. In fact, it’s the beginning of a long metaphor, Snoop describing himself as a dog in the human world, seeing everything in a canine way. Turning into a pet is also a good way to social criticism and social satire.
Nigga: we’re back to the typical target audience of rap. After mainstream hits, it’s as if Dre and Snoop wanted to go back to the basics.
Burn the shit up: in the context in which he just told us to blaze it up, we obviously think that this expression means “light this joint“, but as such, it has a more open meaning, and really means ” burn this shit up “- it can be your house or the world.
D-P-G-C my nigga turn that shit up
DPGC is the name of a band of rappers: Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound (Kurupt and Daz Dillinger), and others. So it’s another way to sign his artwork. We have just highlighted the canine side of Snoop Dogg’s metaphors and this band stands as his kennel.
C-P-T, L-B-C, yeah we hookin’ back up
C-P-T: the public and especially hip-hop fans know this acronym since the hits of NWA, STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON and FUCK THA POLICE. This refers to Compton, of course, the city of Dre.
L-B-C: Long Beach, the city of Snoop.
We hookin’ back up: it’s slangy, oral and faulty English – the correct English version would be “We are hooking back up“. The term hook is polysemous, it means both “hook” as a piece of metal meant to seize something (and Hook is the original name of Disney’s Captain Hook, a friend of Snoop) and “chorus“, and it reminds of “hooker“, “whore“, while the verb “to hook up” means to go out with someone, flirting, from dating to sex. So We’re hookin’ back up both means:
- We get partners, we cling by our hooks
- We accost together, like prostitutes
- We make choruses, we sing
And when they bang this in the club baby you got to get up
They bang this: pretty, gangster-style metaphor, in which the songwriter identifies his music with the “bang” of a gunshot.
In the club: as in CALIFORNIA LOVE, the new audience of Snoop and Dre is not only the black ghetto but, much more widely and ambitiously, the clubs of the world.
Baby: gradually the rap movement will push forward its crooners and lovers. This is the seed of the future hit of 50 Cent, IN DA CLUB, with his character of irresistible rapper-seducer.
Thug niggaz drug dealers yeah they givin’ it up
The original delinquency of rap is evoked warmly. This song makes a kind of synthesis between the “purist rap” spirit and the “commercial rap” spirit.
Lowlife, yo’ life, boy we livin’ it up
Pretty figure of speech! The line starts on low, and ends up…
This line delivers a hedonistic message, quite new in rap but already assumed since songs like CALIFORNIA LOVE where rap was married to the white protest culture of the hippie movement.
Note the remarkable festival of rhymes in “up” that we have just attended:
- burn the shit up
- turn that shit up
- we hookin’ back up
- you got to get up
- they givin’ it up
- we livin’ it up
Which meets the injunction of the intro, blaze it up! light it, ignite it, in short, set it on fire. To set fire is to create heat, agitation, and the heat rises up, like the excitement of the public. In short, these rhymes in “up” are a good way to warm up the audience!
Takin’ chances while we dancin’ in the party fo’ sho’
Takin’ chances: the expression is polysemous, it means that we try our luck trying to flirt on the dancefloor, and we also try his luck as musicians to make the club dance.
Slip my hoe a forty-fo’ and she got in the back do’
This line is deeply ambiguous: Slip my hoe a forty-fo’ is full of slang.
To slip can have several meanings, in the passive sense: to introduce something into something else, or active: to give something to someone, or to slide on something.
My hoe, it’s my whore, my bitch…
Fourty-fo’ is forty-four, and you’re not supposed to know what it is, since it most probably means a 44 millimeter pistol, or something like that.
So we can also understand the expression as:
- I introduce a 44mm gun into my whore and she took the back door, where this back door would have an… anal connotation? 44mm being the rather large diameter of Snoop’s penis?
- Or I give a 44mm gun to my whore and she took the back door, where whore would designate… his girlfriend, or an accomplice? and this situation would then be Snoop setting a trap to an enemy, sending his armed girlfriend through the back door.
Bitches lookin at me strange but you know I don’t care
Bitches: the word will gradually become commonplace and lose its offensive power, by being widely over-used.
but you know I don’t care: this dilettante attitude reminds the one of Eazy-E in REAL MUTHAPHUCKKIN ‘G’S, or of Coolio on a tragic mode in GANGSTER’S PARADISE, among others: the killer or sexist aggressor, contemptuous, indifferent to everything, even to his victims.
Step up in this motherfucker just a-swangin my hair
Step up: here, like in “slip my hoe“, there is no more pronoun, the very dense writing removes useless because easily guessable elements, and prefers to let the meaning of the words float without actualizing it concretely, as to make them more universal.
The line is ambiguous again, we can understand it in two ways:
- I stumbled into this motherfucker while combing my hair, like I did not care about him, so it is an expression of contempt coherent with his bad way to talk about his “hoe” or “bitches“
- Or, I stumbled into this motherfucker and I did not care, as a reaction I just arranged my hair, so it’s also contempt.
In short, either he despises you, or he despises you otherwise, but you have the choice, because he is so cool!
Bitch quit talkin’, Crip walk, stay down with the set
Crip walk: hip-hop dance style base on fast feet movements. Crip: LA gang to which some NWA members belonged.
Take a bullet with some dick and take this dope from this jet
Still a lot of ambiguity and puns in this line:
- Take a bullet, sounds ambiguous, we can take it
- actively, to use this bullet to load a gun and shoot,
- passively, when someone else has just shot this bullet, an we’re the target.
- With some dick: some dick makes the “dick” grammatically innumerable, as some milk or some money; by extension, it can be interpreted as a metonymy which means “take a man“. But to be a dick is to be stupid, like a dick; and in this case the expression means “take any guy, even a stupid one“.
- Take this dope: it sounds with a double meaning again: Snoop tells the bitch to take this dope that is in this little plane, but he also tells the public to take this music.
- From this jet: this little private plane, symbol of the jet-set of the time, and the gentrification of rappers.
Out of town, put it down for the Father of Rap
This line modifies and completes the meaning of the previous ones, clarifying the meaning of the ambiguous expressions: it was Snoop, or Dre, as a father of rap who had sent a bitch with a dick to get some dope.
The Father of rap: this ambitious boast sticks with the theme of the empowerment of African-Americans. Perhaps this father refers to Snoop Dogg himself, but then it sounds light and contrasts with the name of the artist, The Father = Snoopy the Dog??? Or it refers to Dre, more naturally, because he is really one of the founders of rap.
And if yo’ ass get cracked, bitch shut yo’ trap
And if yo’ ass get cracked: double meaning, your ass means either literally “your ass” or by metonymy “you“, so in one case it means “if your ass is cracked“, = if you’re sodomized, and in the other case it means “if you get arrested“.
Come back, get back, that’s the part of success
The sexual allusions continue in the background, given the evocative power of this back and forth movement, which also refers to the trip of the drug courier.
If you believe in the S you’ll be relievin’ your stress
This line becomes ambiguous too because on the one hand, it is part of this little story of drug trafficking, and addresses the smuggler, telling her that she is under protection, and on the other hand it is addressed to the public of the song, to which Snoop is asking to trust himself as a super cool singer.
Conclusion: it was ambiguous from start to finish, every line had a double meaning!
Interlude – Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre
La-da-da-da-dahh
It’s the motherfuckin’ DRE (Dr. Dre MOTHERFUCKER!)
La-da-da-da-dahhh
You know I’m mobbin’ with the DO-double-G
Echo of the intro of the piece, which introduced Snoop, in the tradition of MCs, and consisted of a double signature, here reversed.
We are always in a pop’ art, offbeat, funny style.
Verse 2 – Dr. Dre
Straight off the fuckin’ streets of C-P-T
Allusion to the mythical lines of STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON.
King of the beats you ride to ’em in your Fleet (Fleetwood)
King of the beats: the expression goes hand in hand with the Father of Rap.
The Fleetwood is a luxury car.
Or Coupe DeVille rollin’ on dubs
Coupe DeVille is another luxury car, named in the French way.
Rollin’ on dubs: this is the vocabulary of the world of car tuning, evoking oversized, spectacular wheels.
How you feelin’ whoopty-whoop nigga whut?
Whoopty-whoop sounds comical, especially before the misunderstanding – whut? – that follows.
Dre and Snoop chronic’ed out in the ‘llac
Chronic’ed: allusion to Dre’s best-selling album, THE CHRONIC, 1992.
The ‘llac: he is deliberately not saying the Cadillac, which would be too standard, he makes it more ghetto-style, more slang.
With Doc in the back, sippin on ‘gnac (yeah)
This Doc is a rapper named The D.O.C.
‘gnac is Cognac, the french liquor.
Clip in the strap, dippin through hoods (what hoods?)
Compton, Long Beach, Inglewood!
As in CALIFORNIA LOVE, the songwriters greet their audience.
South Central to the Westside (Wessyde)
South Central is a district of L.A. and the Westside is the west of L.A.
It’s California Love, this California bud got a nigga gang of pub
Dre cites his tube of 1995 with Tupac, CALIFORNIA LOVE.
This California bud: the term bud is known to connoisseurs of cannabis and refers to the flower, also called weed, grass; it is the part that get smoked and that makes people laugh or sleep. At the time, cannabis still stands as a dangerous drug in the public opinion, we are still in the stupid, repressive “War On Drugs” policy decreed by US Presidents, and openly claiming one has the right to smoke weed still appears bold an risky, it sounds criminal. In reality, this offense is ridiculous compared to what was mentioned in the original rap: murders, rapes, wild assaults: real crimes with real victims. 20 years later, many states in the United States decriminalize or legalize cannabis, admitting that they had banned it despite the rights and interests of society – but these jesters of politicians, cops, judges and repressive citizens have never been accountable for having promoted and put into practice for half a century a legislation contrary to human rights! Hip-hop has helped to popularize cannabis enough to bring down this disgusting repressive legislation, to put an end to millions of imprisonments that violate fundamental rights and freedom (including the right to smoke a big one), and to put an end to a huge spoil of public money that has cost billions in salaries of useless cops and jail employees. So, thank you hip hop, smoke ’em all, burn ’em all. In any case poets have always loved and sung flowers, nature, and dreams.
I’m on one, I might bail up in the Century Club
I’m on one: this simple expression is difficult to understand. I am on one what? We can think it refers to the previous “nigga gang of pub” – or maybe the bud, which would mean that he is under the influence of cannabis?
Century Club: the name of this luxury club of LA can also stand as beautiful symbol in this song diffused in clubs in 1999 at the turn of the century.
With my jeans on, and my team strong
My team: this word takes up the old theme of the gangster group, but it actually refers to the new entourage of Dre, who has become one of the most powerful producers of American music.
Get my drink on, and my smoke on
Then go home with, somethin’ to poke on (whassup bitch?)
5th repetition of a series of 5 “on” since “I’m on one“. This helps to support the series of actions to make some of them striking and easy to imagine.
Somethin’ to poke on: it is obviously on purpose to use a misogynistic twist, to provoke the scandal. This is where we see that former victims of oppression (white / black) may very well contribute voluntarily to another oppression (men / women). This misogyny goes with the promotion of cannabis, to sound “bad boy“, in the same logic as Michael Jackson with his album BAD. But unlike the promotion of cannabis, that of misogyny does not really conflict with the dominant culture, which is also very misogynist.
Loc it’s on for the two-triple-oh!
Loc: slang term use by the L.A. Crips gang, which means “buddy“. It is a reference to the universe of OGs, the Original Gangsters.
The two-triple-oh, what is it? Small enigma of the singer to the public to test their IQ… Did you get it? It simply refers to the year 2000. Two, then triple zero.
Comin’ real, it’s the next episode…
In a very original way, the song has no real chorus, and its title is borrowed from this concluding line of the second and last verse.
By the way, the next episode… of what? Another small enigma! Answer: Dre’s saga, of course, and he will not stop there.
Outro – Nate Dogg
Hold up, waiiiiiiit
The very parodic vocal style sticks with that of Snoop Dog and the cool and relaxed atmosphere of the song in general.
Hold up means wait, but it’s also obviously refers to a crime, armed robbery.
For my niggaz who is thinkin we soft
For my niggaz: definition of a rather ghetto type public. But it is to amuse the gallery, it is made to make the general public believe that they are still in the street, while they actually moved away from the bad neighborhoods and now live in villas, as Ice Cube recalled in his diss-song NO VASELINE:
“I saw it comin’ that’s why I went solo
And kept on stompin’
When y’all motherfuckers moved straight outta Compton
Livin’ with the whites one big house
And not another nigga in site”
We do not, playyy
Hm, yes, you do play.
We gon’ rock it til the wheels fall off
Comic resumption of the theme of the ride to L.A. in luxury car that Dre offered us in his verse.
Hold up, heyyy
For my niggaz who is actin too bold
Take a seeaaaaaat
This injunction is surprising: we expected a death threat or something like that.
Hope you ready for the next episode, heyyyeyyy….
This is the explanation of the surprising injunction: it was a little joke, where instead of threatening with death, he just advises to wait until the next episode… smoking grass. It is a form of false track.
… smoke weed everday!
Well yeah. It does not prevent to write novels about some lyrics, eh ?
Dr Dre ft Snoop Dogg – The Next Episode – Synthesis and meaning
The song sounds good, but the lyrics are not at the best level.
It does not have a very special form, is not built on a strong concept, and is not particularly noticeable by the depth or ambition or novelty of its themes.
It’s a good song in the vein of gangsta-rap, well mixed with elements coming from more mainstream, more pop-rock genres, like in the hit CALIFORNIA LOVE: humor, popular culture (cartoon, action movies…), festive spirit, Californian dream, Dolce vita, “thug life”.
It is spiced up by some “rogue” elements, like
- the promotion of cannabis and the positive evocation of organized drug trafficking – but five years after the release of the film PULP FICTION, which also showed violence, machismo, humor, eroticism, and drugs, this theme of drugs was progressively losing some of its subversive power since the public opinion was in the process of reversing in favor of the decriminalization
- a misogynistic, ultra-macho attitude, presented as Super Cool (but get raped on all fours, Snoop, then come back to sing misogynistic and homophobic jokes, we’ll see whether it’s fun and whether you keep your legendary good mood)
- and the usual egotistical provocations, “I am the best rapper in the world“.
Finally, it is also a song that attests to the ghetto out of part of the world of rap, or part of the work of rappers from the ghetto. With the trivialization of this kind of songwriting, it is clear that rap is not (only) a poor, aggressive, brutal, negative, anti-system music, and that the rappers do not let themselves be locked in the sinister destiny of real gangsters. At the time of THE NEXT EPISODE, Eazy-E, Tupac and Notorious BIG ha died already, as so many other young talents. The survivors no longer cultivate hatred and aggression as much as those 3 dead artists, they represent a kin of rap that wants to enjoy life (smoking, partying, fucking…) and get acknowledged by their society by pleasing it, not slaughtering it. It is all the political ambiguity of this stream of the festive rap… it claims to be coming from the ghetto, but the bourgeois masses of the whole world find it exciting and dance on it without worry, sign that they do not see any real threat in it.
…
This was an abstract of Gangsta-rap songwriting. Wanna read more?
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