Snoop Doggy Dogg’s second album opened at No. 1 after its release 30 years ago today, on November 12, 1996, selling 479,000 copies in its first week. Tha Doggfather topped both the US albums chart and the R&B/hip-hop albums chart, and it got there without Dr. Dre producing a single track.
It still lives in the shadow of his debut. Doggystyle had moved 803,000 copies in its opening week in 1993, then a record for a rap album, so Tha Doggfather is often filed as the sequel that came up short. The numbers are more interesting than that.
A turbulent year at Death Row
Snoop was acquitted of all charges in his 1996 murder trial on February 20 and went straight back to work; sessions ran through the year. Dr. Dre, the label’s in-house producer, had already walked away from Death Row to start his own company. DJ Pooh produced and mixed most of the album, with Snoop’s cousin Daz Dillinger, Soopafly, L.T. Hutton and others filling out the credits, and label boss Suge Knight listed as executive producer.
In September 1996 his close friend and label-mate Tupac Shakur was killed. Shakur appears on the closing “Outro” under his Makaveli name. Snoop also produced for the first time, co-producing “(O.J.) Wake Up” with Hutton, who was showing him the keyboard.
A softer Snoop, on purpose
The lyrics are clearly less violent than Doggystyle’s. As a new father, he wanted a more positive image on record. In a 2006 TV interview he called the album “a rebirth of me, as far as me being more positive on what I was trying to say.” He still counts it a win: “I sign more Doggfather records than any other record I put out.”
Not everyone agreed. Dr. Dre said in a magazine interview after the release, “I don’t like Snoop’s new album,” adding: “There’s really nothing that was said on there that hasn’t been said 50 times before.”
How the first week stacks up
- Doggystyle (1993): 803,000
- 2Pac, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (1996): 664,000
- 2Pac, All Eyez on Me (1996): 566,000
- Tha Doggfather (1996): 479,000
That made it the third-biggest rap debut of 1996 and the fourth-biggest debut of the year overall, with Metallica’s Load on top at 680,000. Set against Doggystyle, the opening week was about 60 percent as large: 479,000 divided by 803,000. A buyer for a record-store chain said at the time that rival labels moved their own rap releases to avoid opening against Snoop.
The album was certified 2x Platinum on February 4, 1997, and has sold more than two million copies in the US. It went to No. 2 in Canada and No. 1 on the UK R&B albums chart.
His story is headed for the big screen. Universal’s biopic has cast Aaron Paul as Interscope boss Jimmy Iovine and Cynthia Erivo as Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, and the rapper himself turned 55 in October with a 22nd album out.
Tha Doggfather was also the last album credited to Snoop Doggy Dogg, and his last on Death Row until he acquired the label’s trademarks in 2022 and released BODR.
Further reading
Image: Bruce Baker, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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