Snoop Dogg isn't exactly a man who comes to mind when you think of female empowerment and respecting women. He may not the most misogynistic rapper around, but singing that 'bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks' isn't exactly a reassuring message of admiration for womankind.
Now, Snoop has apparently turned over a new leaf, vowing to add a more respectful tone to his lyrics after learning how to love and understand women.
'Definitely, my attitude has changed towards women,' he told Sky News. 'I am more sensitive and more vulnerable, writing-wise, and accepting a woman for being a beautiful person, as opposed to me saying she is a bitch or a whore.'
'As I grew I fell in love with my wife and started to love my mother, my grandmother and my daughter,' he continued. 'I understood what a woman was and I started to write about and express that. Once I figured out there was room to grow and learn and to be a better person then I incorporated that in everything I was doing.'
That being said, Snoop also says that he has 'no regrets' about his earlier musical misogyny, 'because that was how I was trained when I first started'. He says: 'I don't feel like you can be ashamed or mad about not knowing - if you don't know, you don't know.' Which could be a really infuriating comment (YES, YOU CAN BE ASHAMED OF THE LYRICS 'you got to put that bitch in her place // Even if it's slapping her in the face'), but let's try to put a positive spin on it, and suggest that it's a comment on the larger problem of sexism in our society. Sexists aren't born, they're made - or as Snoop puts it, 'trained'.
Let's hope that by infusing his music with some feminism, Snoop will be able to teach other men about respecting women before they're referring to them as bitches that 'ain't shit'.
From the editors at Cosmopolitan.com.
