Moment of Truce

2Pac joined the Death Row fold, giving Kurupt the alias “Young Gotti” and inspiring Daz to take the surname “Dillinger.” And for a while, it was all good on Death Row. Daz became Dr. Dre’s first studio student, and coproduced most of 2Pac’s 10x-platinum All Eyez on Me, including the hits “I Ain’t Mad at Cha” and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted.”

But the mood quickly darkened: Dr. Dre bounced, 2Pac was killed in ’96, Suge went to jail. Snoop signed with Master P’s No Limit in 1997. Then Daz left. Kurupt also left Death Row, but then returned, becoming senior V.P. The trio’s relationship deteriorated, with Snoop and Daz on one side and Kurupt (and Suge) on the other. Suge allegedly made death threats against Snoop; Daz would fire back. They also began throwing jabs back and forth on wax, in national hip-hop magazines and on the radio. The rivalries threatened to destroy everything that West Coast hip-hop had built up to that time, and only added fuel to the continuing East-West firefight. The West Coast was a shambles.

''I'm like the quarterback- slash-marriage-counselor,'' says Snoop Dogg, who helped Daz Dillinger (left) make peace with Kurupt Young Gotti (right) to drop the new Cali Iz Active. (Photos by Antoine Bonsorte)

Brothers worked it out: Snoop and some of the luminaries who dropped in on the Cali Iz Active shoot.

Related Content

• Remembering Napster
  March 28, 2013
• Dr. Dre on His USC Academy: "This Is the Biggest Thing I've Ever Been a Part Of"
  May 16, 2013
• Ice Cube Talks About His Favorite Projects He's Ever Worked On
  April 24, 2013
• Smoking Wax Weed With Rapper Demrick
  January 17, 2013
• Let's Raise a Glass for the Underrated Warren G
  November 8, 2012

More About

• Dr. Dre
• Kurupt
• Snoop Dogg
• Hip-Hop and Rap
• Hardcore Rap

The Death Row/Dogg Pound beef went on for five years, and it left some wounds. Meanwhile, hip-hop was morphing all around them, as happens with all great cultural movements: Gangsta rap gave way to Jay-Z, to Eminem, to the Dirty South and crunk, to crossover stars like OutKast and Kanye West. Things changed, all right.

When he organized the West Coast peace summit in 2005 — a face-to-face meeting of just about any West Coast rappers who had ever feuded with one another — Snoop said is was a business move. According to an MTV report, Snoop pointed to the success of Southern rappers: “They all work together and have great harmony. This is the West Coast, we built on gangsta, gangsta, gangsta, but sometimes we gotta know when to have peace.”

As he reportedly was mending the rift with Suge Knight and Kurupt, Snoop nudged his cousin Daz to do his part to end the beef. Everyone thought it was an April Fool’s joke when, on April 1, 2005, Daz got on the phone and left a message on Kurupt’s voicemail. “And then the next day, we just hooked it up,” says Daz, chillin’ in the studio with his “Hood Hustle” T-shirt. “From then on, we started mashing and putting it back in perspective. Because, you know, war didn’t make no money, and didn’t make sense.”

“I’m like the quarterback-slash-marriage counselor, the one that puts everything back together in the proper perspective,” says Snoop thoughtfully. “Get everyone thinking alike, moving alike, loving alike, ’cause there was a little bit of resistance from Daz in the beginning, which is expected. ’Cause you know Kurupt had a lot of baggage.

“That’s why I say it’s like a marriage counselor — just let everybody know that it’s built on love first. If we love each other first, then the music should kick right in.”

Snoop and Tha Dogg Pound showed that affection still ran deep when they worked together for the first time on Snoop’s heartfelt single “Real Soon” from ’05’s Welcome to tha Chuuch; the cut was dedicated to everyone locked down, and in particular to Crips cofounder Big Stanley “Tookie” Williams, who was on death row — the real thing, not the label. After Tookie’s execution, Snoop and Tha Dogg Pound realized that it was time to ride — for each other, harder than ever.

“We just came back together and made a classic Dogg Pound gangsta album,” says Daz. “Some of the Original G sound with a new twist,” adds Kurupt, “new-millennium G shit!”

Watching Snoop, Daz and Kurupt groovin’ together in the studio is a beautiful thing. When I’m there, they’re working on tracks produced by Battlecat: “Cali Iz Active,” borrowing from Royal Cash’s “Radio Activity,” and “It's All Hood,” with a guest spot from Ice Cube. The space is jammed with bass and smoke; the energy is crazy high as we all bob our heads, Snoop with a childish smile.

Although Snoop oversees everything, Daz is the man juggling rapper/producer duties. (He’s a successful producer in his own right, producing tracks for T.I., Young Bloodz, his own upcoming So So Gangsta on Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def Records, as well as Kurupt's new Same Day, Different Shit.) Production-wise, Daz is actually the most talented of the three; in Tha Dogg Pound, he makes sure the sound is tight and that the lyrics Kurupt composes directly onto his two-way cell phone come out clean and fierce.

As Daz holds up two joints, I ask him what it is he needs in the studio to make great music. His answer: “Two pounds of weed, blunts, the right recording equipment, a hell of an engineer and some money.” (That equipment, by the way, includes an SSL board, Pro Tools software and MPC3000 hardware.)

Besides Daz and Kurupt spittin’ fire, the new album features Tha Dogg Pound family: Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, RBX and Soopafly. Also appearing are P. Diddy, crunk hero David Banner, Paul Wall and producing legends Battlecat, Swizz Beats and Jazze Pha.