“[My son was] like his nephew. Tupac was a better dad than me,” the rapper says of his late friend Shakur, who died in 1996

Brian Anthony Hernandez, who has nearly 20 years of journalism experience, joined PEOPLE as a writer-editor in 2023. Brian previously worked for Bustle, Billboard, Forbes, MTV, Mashable and Men’s Health.

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Snoop Dogg dropped his debut album and welcomed his first child within a nine-month timespan in the 1990s, forcing him to try to balance fame and fatherhood just as his music career was flourishing.

After releasing his chart-topping Doggystyle album in November 1993, the “Gin and Juice” rapper’s first son, Corde Broadus, was born in August 1994.

Now, in an exclusive conversation with PEOPLE for his cover story, Snoop recalls that period in his life fondly, particularly the help that his famous friend and collaborator Tupac Shakur gave him with his son.

“I was working on Tha Doggfather,” Snoop, 52, says, referring to his sophomore album, which eventually came out in 1996. “So when [Corde] was old enough able to pee and all that other s—, I started taking him to the studio with me. … So I’m raising him around all of the homies.”

This is when Shakur met Snoop’s son and started helping raise the boy, at one point reminding Snoop to feed Corde, even if it was just McDonald’s food.

“Tupac loved him. It’s like his nephew. Tupac was a better dad than me,” Snoop remembers. “We’ve been up here [in the recording studio for] three hours and we ain’t got him nothing to eat. It’s like I’m up here rapping and s—, I’m not being a father. [He was] training me.”

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Shakur’s time with Corde and Snoop was cut short not too long after these studio sessions, when in September 1996 he was gunned down in a drive-by shooting after attending a Mike Tyson boxing match in Las Vegas. He died six days later from injuries sustained in the shooting at the age of 25.

Snoop welcomed his second son, Cordell Broadus, the following year in 1997. He tapped into advice he had learned from his late friend Shakur to continue becoming a better father to both Corde, now 30, and Cordell, 27.

“I put them in football and I watched them work together. Football helped me to become a real good father because I was around other men who were single parents, or either had a great wife, or was a grandfather raising their son’s kids — so much I could learn from them,” Snoop recalls.

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Not long after his boys started playing football, the 16-time Grammy nominee founded the Snoop Youth Football League in 2005 to give inner-city kids the chance to play football.

“Then from that it was like, ‘I’m getting real good at being a father,’ because coaching some of the roughest kids in the city, their parents got backgrounds that you wouldn’t imagine and we making these kids into something special,” Snoops explains.

“And then my kids are growing up right with them to see how tough it is in these societies and how they’re not living there,” he continues. “They just go there to play football but they don’t have to deal with it, and it helped them understand life. So football and all that was a blessing on me being a father because it taught me how to be a father.”

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Several players from Snoop’s youth league have gone on to become college players or NFL stars, including Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud, which Snoop has said makes him feel like a “proud father.”

“Every kid that plays in my league is considered my baby because more than likely they come in as babies and they leave as men,” Snoop said on The Rich Eisen Show in January. “So they may outgrow my lap, but they’ll never outgrow my heart, so they’re going to remain babies to me.”

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