Snoop Dogg, Death Row Pictures, Announce August 2027 Release for Life Story

Snoop Dogg will produce his own upcoming biographical film, "Snoop," through his Death Row Pictures banner. The Universal Pictures movie, starring Jonathan Daviss as the Long Beach rapper, is scheduled to arrive in theaters in August 2027. (Courtesy photo)

More than three decades after Death Row Records introduced Snoop Doggy Dogg to the world, Snoop Dogg is helping decide how Hollywood tells the story.

Universal Pictures will release “Snoop,” a biographical film about the Long Beach rapper’s life and career, nationwide on Aug. 6, 2027. Jonathan Daviss, best known as Pope Heyward on Netflix’s “Outer Banks,” will play Snoop in the title role.

Craig Brewer, whose films include “Hustle & Flow” and “Dolemite Is My Name,” will direct from his rewrite of a screenplay originally written by Joe Robert Cole. Cole’s credits include “Black Panther” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”

Snoop will produce the film with Imagine Entertainment founder Brian Grazer and Death Row Pictures President Sara Ramaker. Universal said the movie will incorporate music from Snoop’s catalog.

That arrangement gives the project something most music biopics spend years trying to secure: the artist, the songs and the company carrying the history under the same roof.

“Snoop” will be the first film released through Death Row Pictures’ overall deal with NBCUniversal Entertainment. The project turns a label name once associated with Snoop’s turbulent rise into a vehicle for preserving — and potentially reframing — that history.

Snoop acquired the Death Row Records brand in 2022, nearly three decades after releasing his debut album through the label. He has since expanded Death Row into music, merchandise, gaming and visual entertainment rather than attempting to operate it solely as a replica of its 1990s incarnation.

“We’re building Death Row into avenues that didn’t exist,” Snoop told The Associated Press in 2024.

A theatrical film about his life may be the clearest example yet.

The movie was initially announced in 2022 with Allen Hughes attached to direct. Brewer later took over the project and revised Cole’s script. Snoop previously appeared in Brewer’s “Dolemite Is My Name,” the 2019 Eddie Murphy film about comedian and independent filmmaker Rudy Ray Moore.

NBCUniversal introduced Daviss and Snoop together at CinemaCon in Las Vegas in April. The studio said filming was expected to begin in Los Angeles this summer.

Snoop framed the movie as a continuation of the story Universal began telling with its 2015 N.W.A film, “Straight Outta Compton.”

“After my brothers got to tell their story with ‘Straight Outta Compton,’ now it’s my turn,” he told the CinemaCon audience.

Snoop appeared briefly in “Straight Outta Compton,” where LaKeith Stanfield portrayed him as a young rapper entering Dr. Dre’s orbit. “Snoop” will be the first major studio movie centered on his full life rather than treating him as part of someone else’s rise.

The challenge will not be finding enough story.

Born Calvin Broadus Jr., Snoop first reached a national audience in 1992 through Dr. Dre’s “Deep Cover” and “The Chronic.” His voice — laid-back, melodic and immediately recognizable — cut through Dre’s production without needing to compete with it.

His 1993 debut, “Doggystyle,” opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and became a defining release of the G-funk era. The Recording Industry Association of America has certified the album quadruple platinum.

At the same time, Snoop was facing a murder charge that threatened to reduce the career to a brief and violent chapter. A Los Angeles jury acquitted Snoop and his bodyguard, McKinley Lee, of murder charges in 1996. Both men also were acquitted of conspiracy to commit assault.

Snoop later described the verdict as a turning point. He told the AP that the experience pushed him to separate himself from people and behavior that could have sent him back to prison or ended his life.

What followed was one of hip-hop’s most unusual reinventions.

Snoop outlasted Death Row’s original collapse, recorded for Master P’s No Limit Records and moved through multiple generations of rap without losing the voice or mannerisms that made him famous. His public life eventually expanded into acting, youth football, cooking television, Olympic coverage, commercials and “The Voice.”

That range makes the eventual shape of “Snoop” an open question.

Universal has not announced the supporting cast or disclosed how much of Snoop’s life the film will cover. The studio also has not said whether the story will remain focused on his Long Beach and Death Row years or follow him through No Limit, his mainstream reinvention and his eventual return as Death Row’s owner.

Snoop’s involvement gives the filmmakers access to his memories and music. It does not yet answer the question that follows every artist-authorized biography: how much of the difficult history will make it to the screen.

The film’s current team suggests that music will not be treated as background decoration. Brewer built “Hustle & Flow” around the process of making a rap record and directed Murphy in “Dolemite Is My Name,” a story about a Black entertainer financing and protecting his own vision when the established industry had little interest in it.

Grazer produced “8 Mile,” while Universal released “Straight Outta Compton.” NBCUniversal Chair Donna Langley has described “Snoop” as a spiritual cousin to the N.W.A film.

This time, however, the artist is not waiting for a studio to decide that his history has value.

Plas Johnson, Saxophonist Who Gave ‘The Pink Panther Theme’ Its Voice, Dies at 94

The cover of Plas Johnson’s Capitol Records album “Mood for the Blues.” Johnson, whose tenor saxophone gave Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther Theme” its unmistakable sound, died July 15 at 94. (Courtesy Photo: Capitol Records)

Most people heard Plas Johnson long before they knew his name.

His tenor saxophone slides into Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther Theme” with a low, bluesy prowl, giving the animated cat in the film’s opening credits its cool, its mischief and its unmistakable strut.

The melody became part of popular culture. The musician behind it spent much of his career outside the spotlight.

Johnson died July 15 at his Los Angeles home, his children, Eric Johnson and Stephanie Oliver, told The New York Times. He was 94. A cause of death was not announced.

He died six days before his 95th birthday. His children said he had performed at his retirement community about a month earlier.

“The Pink Panther Theme” was Johnson’s most famous performance, but it accounted for less than three minutes in a recording career that crossed jump blues, jazz, R&B, soul, rock, pop, television and film.

His saxophone appeared on recordings by the Platters, Larry Williams, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Nancy Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Dr. John, the Beach Boys and scores of others. He played tenor on the Platters’ “The Great Pretender” and piccolo on Bobby Day’s “Rockin’ Robin.”

 

Johnson was part of a generation of Black studio musicians whose work moved across genres more freely than the music industry’s marketing categories did.

A record might be sold as pop, rock, easy listening or a Hollywood soundtrack. Johnson brought to it the phrasing he had developed in Louisiana dance halls, blues bands, jazz clubs and Los Angeles recording rooms.

Other musicians knew what his name meant.

Louisiana arranger and producer Harold Battiste recalled that when producers could not hire Johnson, they looked for someone who sounded like him. Harmonica player and producer Bob Corritore remembered him after his death as a “musician’s musician.”

Mancini did not want an imitation.

He composed “The Pink Panther Theme” with Johnson’s tenor in mind after watching David Niven play the sophisticated jewel thief at the center of Blake Edwards’ comedy.

“Plas has the sound and the style I wanted,” Mancini wrote in his autobiography.

The theme was recorded in 1963 for the film, which opened in the United States in 1964. Johnson played during the introduction, returned for the central solo and closed the piece.

He later recalled that the arrangement felt special from the first run-through. When the musicians finished, the string section joined the rest of the room in applauding — an unusual response during a professional studio session.

Mancini’s music from “The Pink Panther” won three Grammy Awards, while the score received an Academy Award nomination. The American Film Institute later ranked it No. 20 on its list of the 25 greatest American film scores.

Johnson’s identity remained less familiar than the solo.

He sometimes met listeners who told him that his performance sounded exactly like the musician heard in the movie. Johnson would explain that they were listening to the same man.

He returned to the theme decades later, rerecording it for the 2004 tribute album “Ultimate Mancini” and the 2006 remake of “The Pink Panther” starring Steve Martin.

Johnson was born July 21, 1931, in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and grew up in a family of professional musicians. His mother played piano, while his father played saxophone and banjo.

The family later moved to Thibodaux and then New Orleans. Johnson began as a singer before his father gave him a soprano saxophone. He switched to tenor at 15 and formed the Johnson Brothers Combo with his older brother, pianist Ray Johnson.

The brothers played dances around the New Orleans area, mixing the popular music of Louis Jordan, Dinah Washington and Charles Brown with the bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

The crowd did not always ask for bebop. The brothers played it anyway.

In 1951, singer and pianist Charles Brown heard Johnson perform at the Dew Drop Café in New Orleans and hired him. The job lasted about six months before Johnson was drafted into the Army, where he continued playing in a military band.

Johnson moved to Los Angeles with his siblings in 1954. Jam sessions led to recording dates, and his blues-touched sound proved valuable as rock and roll expanded the market for musicians who could combine Black musical language with the precision demanded by commercial studios.

A session with Johnny Otis brought him to the attention of Capitol Records executive Dave Cavanaugh. Johnson soon found himself recording behind Cole, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and other major stars.

He could bring personality to a record without crowding the singer or arrangement.

“You just have to know when to start and when to stop,” Johnson said in a 2005 interview.

That judgment kept him working through decades of changes in recording technology and popular taste.

Johnson remained active in jazz while handling commercial studio work. He released albums under his own name, including “This Must Be the Plas!” and “Mood for the Blues,” and maintained a long association with trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison.

In 1970, he joined the studio band for “The Merv Griffin Show,” beginning a 15-year run that placed a working jazz ensemble inside a five-day-a-week television production. He continued accepting outside recording dates during the show’s run.

Johnson later appeared in Denny Tedesco’s documentary “The Wrecking Crew,” which brought wider attention to the Los Angeles session musicians behind generations of familiar records. The film also featured New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer, with whom Johnson had worked frequently.

By then, Johnson had spent more than half a century demonstrating how much identity a musician could fit into an introduction, a background fill or a few measures between a singer’s lines.

Alley Boy, Influential Voice From Atlanta’s Mixtape Era, Dies

Alley Boy, the Atlanta rapper whose hard-edged records helped make Duct Tape Entertainment one of the city’s most recognizable mixtape-era movements, died Monday, his daughter confirmed on Instagram.

Multiple outlets reported his death was caused by kidney failure.  He was in his early 40s. His exact age remains the subject of conflicting reports, with music publications placing his age at 42, while biographical databases list his birth date as March 3, 1981, which would make him 45.

The confirmation followed a day of confusion. Reports of Alley Boy’s death began circulating Sunday, but his daughter said Monday morning that he was still alive and criticized people for spreading the news prematurely.

Later Monday, she posted photographs in his memory, including a childhood image of Alley Boy holding her and another showing her hand resting on his. She marked the second photograph with the date July 20, 2026, confirming his death.

Alley Boy, smiles while holding two young children in an undated photograph. His daughter shared the image to her Instagram story on Monday, overlaid with an emotional message, to confirm the mixtape pioneer's death.

Alley Boy, whose real name was Curt Freeman, had publicly documented serious kidney problems and his need for a transplant. He said in 2023 that he had begun dialysis and later described undergoing treatment three times a week.

He attributed the damage to his kidneys in part to years of drinking codeine cough syrup, commonly called lean, and used later interviews to warn younger people about the habit. 

Alley Boy never became one of Atlanta’s biggest crossover stars. His standing came from somewhere else.

During a period when mixtapes could establish a rapper’s weight without a national radio hit, his voice carried through East Atlanta, Southern street rap and the artists who understood what Duct Tape represented. His performances were blunt and pressurized, often making anger, fear and desperation sound like parts of the same thought.

He told The Fader in 2011 that he grew up in Edgewood Courts, began rapping at 9 and entered a recording studio by the time he was 10 or 11. With both parents struggling with drugs, he lived with his grandmother and began paying for studio sessions once he could earn his own money.

“I always fell back to the music,” he said.

Freeman and longtime friend Big Bank Black co-founded Duct Tape Entertainment, an independent East Atlanta operation whose identity was built as much around loyalty and neighborhood ties as music. The company later became home to Trouble, another respected Atlanta rapper whose death in 2022 left a lasting wound inside the group.

Alley Boy introduced himself to a wider Southern rap audience with the 2009 mixtape “Da Don.” He followed it with “The Definition of F--- S---” and its 2011 sequel, records that established his reputation as an uncompromising street rapper during one of Atlanta’s most competitive mixtape periods.

“The Definition of F--- S--- 2” also earned attention well outside the usual mixtape circuit.

Pitchfork praised the urgency of the project and Alley Boy’s consistency, noting how easily his threats and more vulnerable moments ran into one another. The tape featured Trouble, Jeezy, Yo Gotti and Freddie Gibbs, but Alley Boy’s intensity remained its center.

His catalog eventually connected him with artists including Pusha T, Meek Mill, Future, Master P and Fat Trel. “Your Favorite Rapper,” with Pusha T, challenged performers whose public images did not match the lives they described on records. “War Cry,” released in 2013, included “Stack It Up” with Meek Mill, “Mama’s House” with Trouble and collaborations with Future, Master P, Yo Gotti and Young Scooter.

His 2012 project “The Gift of Discernment” showed more of the reflection beneath the confrontation. It arrived through Duct Tape Entertainment and was followed by projects including “War Cry,” “Alley Shakur (The Soul of a Runaway Slave),” “Definition of F--- S--- Pt. 3” and “AlleyGod.”

The Duct Tape name never became the commercial empire its founders envisioned, but its influence survived the label deals and internal fractures that slowed its momentum.

Less than a month before Alley Boy’s death, he joined Big Bank for an extended episode of the “Perspektives” podcast. The two revisited Duct Tape’s rise and spoke candidly about business inexperience, industry politics, financial problems and the decisions that kept the movement from reaching its full potential.

 

The conversation also turned to grief, mental health and life after the deaths of people close to them, particularly Trouble. Alley Boy spoke less like a rapper protecting an image than a man taking account of what the years had cost.

News of his death brought tributes from across Atlanta rap.

21 Savage called him an East Atlanta blueprint and legend. DJ Scream remembered him as one of the best rappers the city produced. Master P, who recorded with Alley Boy as part of the Louie V Mob period, praised him as a soldier and recalled the street records they made together.

Those reactions reflected a career whose importance was never best measured by chart positions. Alley Boy helped represent an East Atlanta rap world that existed outside the city’s most famous label systems, carrying Duct Tape’s name through mixtapes, collaborations and a voice that rarely softened itself for wider approval.

His final public chapter was different. He spoke openly about dialysis, his need for a kidney and the damage he believed codeine had done to his body. The same rapper who built his name on survival began using his experience as a warning.

“What was meant to destroy me woke me up,” he wrote after starting dialysis. “Now I know my purpose.”