Suge Knight has doubled down on his controversial claims that Dr. Dre wasn’t the mastermind producer behind Snoop Dogg‘s groundbreaking Doggystyle.
In an interview from prison with TMZ posted on Saturday (April 29), the former Death Row CEO said it was Daz Dillinger — the Dogg Pound rapper and producer who is also Snoop’s cousin — behind the boards instead.
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“What’s so great about Daz is, this guy, I went to and said, ‘We gotta finish the album,'” Suge told the publication. “He did the whole — he did everything on Doggystyle. By himself. The whole album was done. He did everything. He produced it.
He then explained how, from his perspective, Dre ended up with the credit.
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“So when it was time to come out, the streets said, well, they want Andre [Dr. Dre] to be on it. And Andre said, ‘I want to be on there.’ So Andre went to Daz and said, ‘Look man, let me say it was produced by me, and put my name on it. You’ll get paid, but let me be the one who produced it.
“So I told Daz, ‘That’s something he wanted to do. I don’t recommend it, because you’re the one who produced it, and you’re giving up your publishing.’ So, Daz signed paperwork, and said it was produced by Dre.”
HipHopDX has reached out to Daz for comment.
Doggystyle was one of the most groundbreaking albums of the 1990s Hip Hop era. In its first week of release alone, it sold more than 800,000 copies and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. At the time, Doggystyle set the record for the fastest-selling Hip Hop album.
By 2015, the album had sold more than seven million copies in the United States, and 11 million copies worldwide, thus turning Snoop Dogg into a bona fide superstar, and establishing Dr. Dre as a Hip Hop super-producer.
This isn’t the first time that Suge Knight has spoken about Daz’s involvement in Doggystyle. Back in 2013, when the album celebrated its 20th anniversary, Knight made similar claims to Rolling Stone.
“Everybody thought [Dr. Dre] would be doing the records, but Daz pretty much did the whole album,” he said at the time. “And at the end of the day, once Daz finished it, everybody wanted Andre to get the credit. Next thing I know Daz is having a meeting with Andre and them and came back and said, “It’s okay, give me a few bucks and I’ll sign anything over that says produced by Andre instead of me.”
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Elsewhere in his new interview with TMZ, Suge Knight also claimed Dr. Dre and 2Pac never worked together directly on “California Love.”
“‘Pac and Dre was never in the studio together,” he said. “They wasn’t in the studio doing ‘California Love.’ They hated each other. That simple.”
