Dr Dre walks into the room and glances around. “No drinks in here?” he says. “No shots?! What the f***, man?” He turns heel to the hotel corridor. It is a corridor littered with humidifiers panting as they try to clear the smell of marijuana. It is a fruitless, futile task. There is one in the room, too. Dre returns, drink in hand, now with Snoop Dogg. “Turn that shit off,” Snoop says, nodding to it. “Don’t be f***ing with my smoke.” He pulls a brass bin to the table as a makeshift ashtray, and lights a joint about the length and width of his middle finger. The smoking laws over here aren’t posing a problem, then? Snoop grins. “Laws? What laws?” His eyes are the colour of a cue ball.
Though the pair’s fame will forever be linked to each other — thanks to albums The Chronic (1992), Doggystyle (1993) and 2001 (er, 1999) — it is unusual to see them together in the UK. Last Thursday, at a party in Flipper’s Roller Boogie that drew Jude Bellingham, Idris Elba, Anya Taylor-Joy, Shaquille O’Neal and Lebron James, they gave their first performance together here in more than three decades. Astonishingly, Eminem joined them; it was a historic show. “We only ever performed here one time,” says Snoop. “Brixton Academy. All hood, not like the shit we’re on now.” Why wait so long? Dre shrugs. “There is no reason.” Snoop likens them to Batman and Robin; often separate, but better together.
