Snoop Lion is the latest celebrity to endorse a candidate for the November 2012 presidential election and the rap artist, formerly known as Snoop Dogg, is going with current President Barack Obama.
The hip hop star made his announcement during a recent press conference at the Toronto International Film Festival for his documentary “Reincarnated, Snoop Lion.”
“They need to give Obama four more years, man,” he said. “[Former President George W.] Bush [expletive] up for eight years, so you gotta at least give [Obama] eight years. He cleaned half the (expletive) up in four years, realistically.”
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Earlier this month, Obama was formerly announced as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate at the group’s national convention in North Carolina. The U.S. leader has come under fire from Republicans and other critics who say he has not done enough to bring the United States out of an economic crisis.
“It ain’t like y’all gave him a clean house,” Snoop Lion told reporters. “Y’all gave him a house where the TV didn’t work, the toilet was stuffed up. Everything was wrong with the house.”
Snoop Lion also referenced the killing of Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, saying that Obama “went and found him and knocked him down, so don’t forget about that.”
Democratic leader and former President Bill Clinton said at the convention that Obama, who took office in 2008, “inherited a deeply damaged economy” and that “no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years.”
“So give him four years to get his thing together and finish this deal out,” Snoop Lion told reporters. “You heard what Clinton said. You loved Clinton, didn’t you?”
A video of the press conference was posted on the rapper’s official website – SnoopDogg.com. Also published recently – a fan-created YouTube video, which combines audio clips of Obama’s voice and a video of him speaking, that depicts the president announcing the marijuana-loving rapper as the United States’ “first ever Staff Chief of Joints.”
The popular rapper, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, rose to fame in the 1990s and is known for hits such as “Who Am I? (What’s My Name?),” “Gin and Juice” and “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang.” His hip hop music contains explicit language and has referenced murder, guns, sex and one of his favorite activities – smoking marijuana.
He announced in July that he had changed his stage name from Snoop Dogg to Snoop Lion, saying that he was “born again” following a visit to Jamaica in February. He also said is also embracing reggae in a bid to make music that his “kids and grandparents can listen to.”
“I’m still Snoop Dogg,” he told reporters at the press conference. “This is me right now. I’m Snoop (expletive) Dogg till I die. But at the end of the day, when I’m making my reggae music, I’m in the light of Snoop Lion, so you know, you have to respect both worlds because there’s a softer, more gentler, peaceful side when he’s the Lion. But if you disrespect me … you will get the (expletive) Dogg.”
“They just crowned me the Lion, you know, because it’s associated with Rastafara, it’s associated with reggae music and they felt like the Dogg was no longer needed, you know, for my journey that I was on,” he added. “So it was given to me, it wasn’t that I chose that name. It’s a natural transformation. It’s like from the Dogg to the Lion. It’s not anything but a transformation and a growth of an artist and a person and a man.”
His new documentary accompanies an upcoming reggae album, also called “Reincarnated.” The rapper says that while he continues to use explicit language in his everyday life, he “didn’t cuss one time” on the new record.
“It’s not that I don’t want to do it anymore, I just didn’t want to do it on this particular record,” he said. “I don’t want to do it when I’m making reggae music because I fell like it was never intended for reggae music. Those words were hip hop words, those were the hip hop language, that was the language that hip hop communicates with.”
A reporter asked the rapper if reggae music could help quell the some of the “anger” among the “hip hop” generation in the United States.
“I believe that my influence alone can do that and I like to put a lot of pressure on myself because a lot of people follow me,” he said. “And I believe that the best example I can be is by doing the right thing and when I do the right thing, it makes others want to do the right thing.”
“That’s one thing about hip hop – we’re very influential,” he added. “We influence the nation of people to follow. We have so many different genres and ethnicities who love hip hop, that it’s never quoted as a black thing anymore. It’s your thing now. It’s everybody’s thing. So we’re that influential. So if we do the right thing with one person at time, it will reflect and it will pass on.”