Remembering A Time When Snoop Dogg Was Intentionally Cartoonish

Format magazine examines some of the most famous comic book-inspired hip-hop album covers, including Outkast’s ATliens, MF Doom’s Operation: Doomsday, and, of course, Snoop’s infamous Doggystyle:

Snoop (and Dre) jack [Parliament’s] beats, then get Snoop’s cousin, or whoever “drew” it, to “bless” his debut’s cover. But wait, there’s more! The liner notes feature a comic by the cover-artist, which is also awful, but somehow endearing. And the comic introduced me to the term “hocus pocus,” meaning weed-bullshit. It has far greater meaning and usage, though. Say you’re running late for work and the bus pulls away as you reach the door. That’s hocus pocus, nawimean?

We naw! And we remember thinking that Doggystyle was possibly the ugliest CD in our collection–like if R. Crumb met R. Kelly, and they decided to start an airbrush T-shirt company that specialized in gaudy drawings of horny animals. And speaking of comic-inspired covers, how could they forget this recent gem? That’s a first-rate Will Eisner tribute if we ever saw one.

Comic Inspired [Formatmag.com]