Hip Hop icon Snoop Dogg has acquired the Death Row Records brand from MNRK Music Group, a song publishing and recording company backed by private equity firm Blackstone Inc.
The deal is expected to include Death Row’s entire music catalog, said a person familiar with the transaction who asked to not be identified because the details weren’t public. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
Started in the early 1990s, Death Row was home to several important West Coast hip hop artists, including Tupac Shakur, Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, Shad “Lil Bow Wow” Moss, Nate Dogg and Snoop Dogg himself, who at the time was known as Snoop Doggy Dogg. The label went bankrupt in 2006 and was later acquired by an entity called Entertainment One, which toymaker Hasbro Inc. bought in 2019. Blackstone snapped up the label last year via its $385 million purchase of Entertainment One’s music business.
