Snoop Dogg’s second album is 30 years old, and instead of a plain reissue it has been turned into a DJ set. Doggfather 30: The Long Game is a new mix of Tha Doggfather credited to DJ Green Lantern and DJ Snoopadelic, now streaming on Apple Music with Snoop Dogg listed as its second artist.
Green Lantern explained the plan in the listing’s notes. “I wanted to celebrate the album, but add new life to it via remixes and adding samples and references that fit the themes of the songs and the overall vibe,” he said, adding: “Plus we got some exclusives on it.”
What a DJ mix does to an old album
A DJ mix is not a remaster. Instead of cleaning up the original tapes, the DJ blends songs into one continuous set, drops in remixes and new samples, and changes the running order. Green Lantern built his name exactly that way: his mixtapes in the late 1990s and early 2000s caught Eminem’s attention, and in 2002 he became the official DJ for Shady Records. He later hosted the hip hop station on the Grand Theft Auto IV soundtrack, producing its songs himself.
That makes him a natural fit for Tha Doggfather, which was long even by 1990s standards. The original had 21 tracks and ran 74 minutes and 13 seconds, so any mix has to cut, compress and reshape it. The mix’s full track list was not shown on the listing we read, so how much of the album survives intact is still unclear.
The album being celebrated
Tha Doggfather came out on November 12, 1996, through Death Row and Interscope, and opened at No. 1 in the US with 479,000 copies sold in its first week. That was well short of the 803,000 Doggystyle sold in its debut week in 1993, a figure that was then the record for a rap album. Put another way, the follow-up opened at about 60 percent of the debut’s pace and still topped the chart.
It was also the first Snoop album made without Dr. Dre, who had left Death Row earlier in 1996 to start his own label. DJ Pooh produced most of it, with Daz Dillinger, Soopafly and L.T. Hutton also contributing, and Snoop earned his first production credit. The samples leaned on old-school touchstones such as Run-D.M.C., Biz Markie, Zapp and Roger, and the Gap Band.
Snoop has described the record as a turning point. “I think Tha Doggfather was a rebirth of me,” he told an interviewer in 2006, saying he wanted to be “more positive” in what he was trying to say. He also said he signs more copies of Tha Doggfather than of any other record he has made.
Why the anniversary lands differently now
Tha Doggfather was Snoop’s last album on Death Row until 2022, when he acquired the label’s trademarks and released BODR. A 30th anniversary project in 2026 is therefore a celebration of an album from the label he now controls, which was not the case for most of its life.
We covered the original release in detail in our story on Tha Doggfather turning 30 and its 479,000-copy opening week. For where Snoop is now, see our piece on Snoop Dogg turning 55 with a 22nd album and a 2027 biopic.
For fans, the practical point is simple. The Long Game is a streaming release on Apple Music, and the original 74-minute album, with its 21 tracks and the guest list of Charlie Wilson, Kurupt, Warren G, Nate Dogg, Too Short and Teena Marie, is still available alongside it.
Further reading
Image: Remy Golinelli, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
