Snoop Dogg Fires Shots At The Clown President & America’s Political Circus (Video)

In the colorful, creative, and comedic video for Snoop Dogg’s collaboration with BADBADNOTGOOD and Kaytranada, “Lavender,” clowns are in abundance – literally and, in the case of Donald Trump, figuratively. Starring Michael Rapaport and co-directed by Jesse Wellens, the mini-movie follows a 1950s-styled suburban family adorned with circus-clown makeup, and Snoop’s presence is everywhere. From the Snoop Loops cereal in the opening sequence to the raps he delivers throughout, “Lavender” is a brilliant visual essay on racial politics in 2017 America. As Rapaport’s character gets pulled over by the police, he is shot as a bystander (notably, a Black man) films the entire scene – and the story unravels from there.

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Tongue-in-cheek references to the circus that is contemporary America’s social and political climate abound; the aforementioned bystander uploads his footage to ClownTube, titling it “Clown Cop Kills Clown,” while Snoop raps about all the goofy, ridiculous people in power who allow for such events to take place. Unsurprisingly, the presidential character in the clip has a face painted bright orange, the Clown Commander-in-Chief made up to look like Donald Trump. As a CNN-like story hits TV, the headline “Ronald Klump wants to deport all doggs” flashes across the screen, clearly an allusion to Trump’s plans for immigration policy. As the footage of the Clown-Cop shooting goes viral, Snoop (the only character free of makeup) eventually straps up and confronts the presidential clown, and it ends with a bang.

In an interview with Billboard, Snoop discusses the video’s imagery and the political nature of his lyrics. “The whole world is clownin’ around, and [co-director Jesse Wellens’] concept is so right on point with the art direction and the reality, because if you really look at some of these motherfuckers, they are clowns,” explains the Long Beach, California icon. He goes on to express his concern about a host of policies enacted by Trump, saying “The [so-called Muslim] ban that this motherfucker tried to put up; him winning the presidency; police being able to kill motherfuckers and get away with it; people being in jail for weed for 20, 30 years and motherfuckers that’s not Black on the streets making money off of it — but if you got color or ethnicity connected to your name, you’ve been wrongfully accused or locked up for it, and then you watching people not of color position themselves to get millions and billions off of it. It’s a lot of clown shit going on that we could just sit and talk on the phone all day about, but it’s a few issues that we really wanted to lock into [for the video] like police, the president and just life in general.”

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Snoop says that part of his desire to make this song (and willingness to assassinate the president’s character in the video) is that “nobody’s dealing with the real issue with this fucking clown as president, and the shit that we dealing with out here, so I wanted to take time out to push pause on a party record and make one of these records for the time

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“Lavender,” which is a remix of a BADBADNOTGOOD song of the same name, will “be a part of my new album that I just finished. It’s called Never Left and it should be out [soon], maybe in May,” according to Snoop.