Snoop Dogg is marking the 30th anniversary of Tha Doggfather, his second studio album, released on November 12, 1996 through Death Row Records and Interscope. The anniversary, which landed yesterday, is being celebrated this week with a special mix by DJ Green Lantern, Doggfather 30: The Long Game, out now, and a limited edition commemorative vinyl release arriving today, November 13.
Date honesty first: nothing here is new music in the drop sense. This is a catalogue milestone, and a large one. Tha Doggfather debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with about 479,000 copies sold in its first week, went on to double platinum certification in the United States, and earned platinum certification in Canada, a detail worth underlining for Canadian readers: this record was not just an American West Coast story, it sold at the highest level here too, as Noise11 records in its anniversary history.
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Tha Doggfather At 30: The Album Itself
The album Snoop made as his second statement ran 21 tracks and was built by a production bench of DJ Pooh, Daz Dillinger, Soopafly and L.T. Hutton. Its singles remain the entry points thirty years on: Snoop’s Upside Ya Head, built on a Gap Band sample, the Biz Markie cover Vapors, and the title track Doggfather, which took its visual language from The Godfather films. In the middle of a decade when West Coast rap ran the charts, this was the genre’s biggest voice making a record about stature: the follow-up as coronation.
It also closed a chapter. Tha Doggfather was Snoop’s final album for Death Row under the name Snoop Doggy Dogg, and its sound, polished, orchestral G-funk, pointed toward the broader career that followed, from pop collaborations to his current run as an entertainment figure. Revisited today, the album reads less like a sequel and more like a blueprint for longevity.
Green Lantern Rebuilds The Album As A Mix
The centrepiece of the anniversary is Doggfather 30: The Long Game, a DJ mix by DJ Green Lantern and DJ Snoopadelic available on Apple Music, running 22 songs across 55 minutes. Green Lantern explained the approach to Apple Music:
I wanted to celebrate the album, but add new life to it via remixes and adding samples and references that fit the themes of the songs and the overall vibe.
That is the right format for this record. A straight reissue would have frozen Tha Doggfather in 1996; a working DJ rebuilding it with new samples and references treats it as living material, the way the songs have actually survived, through mixes, samples and West Coast radio, for three decades.
Vinyl, And What The Milestone Proves
The limited edition vinyl editions headline the physical side of the celebration, debuting across the Record Planet Mega Record and CD Fair weekend of November 14 and 15 after the anniversary week’s digital launch. Vinyl is where catalogue anniversaries now prove themselves, and a double platinum, platinum-in-Canada album with this one’s single run is built for exactly that format.
Thirty years after November 12, 1996, Tha Doggfather holds a specific place: the moment the biggest voice in West Coast rap proved the debut was not the ceiling. The mix is streaming now, the vinyl is in the world this week, and the album underneath both is worth the full revisit.
