Anti-Trump Rapper Snoop Dogg Reverses Course, Performs At Pre-Inauguration Event
Hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg — a longtime critic of President-elect Trump who once posted a music video that featured violent imagery against him — appears to have had a change of heart, as the rap mogul was among a handful of music artists who performed at pre-inauguration event on Friday night.
With just three days to go before Trump’s January 20 inauguration, cryptocurrency executives and backers, celebrities and Trump supporters flocked to the first annual “Crypto Ball” for a pre-inauguration event in downtown Washington D.C. on Friday. Guests included several big names in the cryptocurrency industry, including Michael Saylor, Brian Armstrong, the Winklevoss brothers and Jesse Powell, among several others.
A number of incoming Trump Administration officials were on-hand for the event as well, including former PayPal executive David Sacks, who will be serving as the first ever White House crypto czar. Sacks — who had previously supported Democrats in the past — emerged as a major ally of then-candidate Trump during the 2024 campaign cycle and hosted a number of fundraisers.
As guests downed cocktails and mingled in the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, a number of high-profile music artists and rappers performed onstage, including the Nelly, Soulja Boy and Rick Ross. A number of additional rappers are listed as performers at future pre-inauguration events, including Kodak Black, Rod Wave and Five Foreign, while The Village People and Carrie Underwood will be among the Inauguration Day performers.
In a move that drew the ire of the left and shocked the political world as a whole, Snoop Dogg appeared onstage to headline the Crypto Ball on Friday night. Footage from the event showed the rapper performing a number of his greatest hits, while multiple event attendees decked out in “Make America Great Again” gear posted photos with him.
Snoop Dogg poses for a photo with teenage conservative activist Bo Loudon, a close friend of the president-elect’s youngest son Barron
Throughout Trump’s first term in the White House, Snoop Dogg established himself as a fierce critic. In 2017, he released an anti-Trump song titled “Make America Crip Again,” a dig at the president’s “Make America Great Again” slogan while including a reference to the violent street gang with whom he is affiliated.
“The President said he wants to make America great again. F*** that s**t, we gonna make America Crip again,” the track begins. The rapper went on to attack Trump over his opposition to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protests, as Trump referred to anthem protesters as “sons of b**ches” and called for them to be cut.
“Certain people feel like we should make America ‘great again,’ but that time they’re referring to always takes me back to separation and segregation, so I’d rather Make America Crip Again,” Snoop Dogg said in a statement at the time. “What I mean by that is, in my lifetime, that’s when young Black men in impoverished areas organised to help their communities and to take care of their own because society basically left them for dead.”
The rap legend’s most controversial anti-Trump moment came in his 2017 music video “Lavender,” in which the rapper could be seen retrieving a handgun from a desk as images of the president cut in and out. In a mockery of Trump’s immigration plans, the rapper and a group of armed men then ambush an actor playing Trump before Snoop shoots him in the head.
With Snoop Dogg now appearing at a Trump inauguration event, his views on the president-elect appear to have officially shifted dramatically, however.
Last January, Snoop stated that he has “nothing but love and respect” for Trump due to his efforts to pardon people close to him during the waning days of his first term. “Donald Trump? He ain’t done nothing wrong to me. He has done only great things for me,” he told The Times UK.
The rapper specifically pointed to the time Trump pardoned Michael Harris, the co-founder of Snoop’s first record label, death row. Harris had been in prison for drug-related offenses.
“So I have nothing but love and respect for Donald Trump,” he added.