Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. was born on 20 October 1971 in Long Beach, California, and was raised by his mother, Beverly Tate, after his biological father left the family a few months after his birth. He earned the nickname “Snoopy” as a child because of a resemblance to the cartoon character, a name that stuck and later became his stage identity. He began rapping in sixth grade and, after graduating from high school in 1989, was arrested for cocaine possession and spent time in and out of county jail over the following years, according to Wikipedia. It was during this period that he started recording demo tapes with a group of Long Beach friends that would eventually change the course of his life.

Those demo tapes, recorded with his group 213 alongside Warren G and Nate Dogg, found their way to producer Dr. Dre through Warren G, who was his stepbrother. Dre signed Broadus, by then performing as Snoop Doggy Dogg, and featured him prominently on his 1992 solo album The Chronic, where his distinctive laid-back drawl made an immediate impression. That exposure led directly to a deal with Death Row Records, the label co-founded by Suge Knight and Dr. Dre, and set up the release of his own debut album the following year, as detailed by Wikipedia.

Snoop’s debut album, Doggystyle, was released in November 1993 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 806,858 copies sold in its first week, a record for a debuting artist at the time. The album spent six weeks at the top of the chart, has since sold more than 11 million copies worldwide, and was certified quadruple platinum by the RIAA. Doggystyle is widely credited with helping establish G-funk as a mainstream commercial force and later earned a place on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, cementing Snoop as one of hip-hop’s defining voices of the 1990s, per Wikipedia.

Snoop has amassed 17 Grammy Award nominations across his career, and while his own recordings had not converted one into a competitive win by early 2026, his television work has been directly rewarded: he shared in the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) as one of the headline performers of the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in February 2022, a set watched by more than 103 million viewers alongside Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar, according to Wikipedia. He added two Sports Emmy Awards in 2024 for his broadcasting work at the Paris Olympics, alongside a Hollywood Walk of Fame star and a 2016 WWE Hall of Fame induction, according to Wikipedia.

Snoop’s cultural footprint expanded dramatically through his role as an NBC special correspondent at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where he spent more than two weeks visiting landmarks, attending events and interviewing athletes for the network’s prime-time coverage, building on the viral goodwill he had already earned for his comic commentary on the Tokyo 2020 dressage competition, as reported by theScore. The Paris assignment reset how much of the mainstream public saw him: he went on to perform at the Los Angeles 2028 handover ceremony and was subsequently named an honorary Team USA coach for the 2026 Winter Olympics, with the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee crediting his “contagious” enthusiasm for the movement, according to Music-News.

Over three decades of mainstream visibility, Snoop has built a long list of brand tie-ups, including an appearance alongside Martha Stewart in a T-Mobile commercial during Super Bowl LI in 2017. His most talked-about modern campaign came with Solo Stove in November 2023, when he announced he was “giving up smoke,” a tease that turned out to be a pivot to the brand’s smokeless fire pits rather than a retirement from cannabis; the ad went viral and ranked eighteenth on Ad Age’s list of the best advertisements of 2023. The commercial success did not match the buzz, however: Solo Brands’ interim finance chief said publicly that the campaign “did not lead to the sales lift that we had planned,” and the company’s president and chief executive departed the business in January 2024 in the aftermath, according to NME.

Snoop’s business interests now span several industries. In February 2022 he acquired the Death Row Records trademarks and brand from MNRK Music Group, reviving a label he had once recorded for as an artist, in a deal whose exact terms were not disclosed, though it was reported by some outlets at a price in the region of $50 million, per Gigwise; catalogue rights proved more complicated than the trademark purchase, and Wikipedia notes that streaming rights to the back catalogue were briefly pulled before being restored in 2023, with Wikipedia also confirming he later sold a stake in the catalogue to Larry Jackson’s Gamma label. In cannabis, he co-founded the venture capital fund Casa Verde Capital with Ted Chung and Karan Wadhera in 2018; the fund closed its second vehicle at $100 million, more than doubling its debut fund, and has backed businesses across cultivation, delivery, retail and cannabinoid wellness, according to Yahoo Finance UK. He also holds an executive creative consultant role at Def Jam Recordings, taken on in 2021, and in July 2025 became a co-owner and investor in Welsh football club Swansea City.

Snoop’s primary residence is a roughly 4,000-square-foot, four-bedroom home on more than 2.8 acres in the gated County Estates community of Diamond Bar, California, which he bought in 1998 for $720,000; the property, which includes a large swimming pool, spa and outdoor basketball court, has been estimated to be worth in the region of $1.7 million today. He also bought a second property on the same street that he converted into a private recording studio and hangout space known as “The Chuuuch,” complete with conference rooms and gaming facilities, according to Hello! Magazine. He has additionally owned investment properties elsewhere in Southern California and, more recently, an estate purchased in Douglasville, Georgia in 2021, per Celebrity Net Worth.