‘Be the Biggest Kid in the Room’: Latto & Snoop Dogg on the Secrets to Extreme Charisma
Two uniquely personable MCs, from two different generations, go deep on their come-up, fighting hate with love, and that time Pharrell got too high and left Snoop alone to produce Stevie Wonder
Photographs by Nicol Biesek
L atto and Snoop Dogg are preparing for their Musicians on Musicians cover shoot at Hollywood’s historic United Recording studios, when Snoop shouts out a song he’d like cued up: “Can we turn on that ‘Rip me out the plastic, I’m actin’ brand-new?’”
Latto lets out a yelp like she just won a Grammy, overjoyed that Snoop Dogg knows the opening bars to her single “Put It on Da Floor.” Though they just met, the two get along like old friends. They rap “Put It on Da Floor” together, with Latto excitedly ad-libbing. Snoop records a video for Latto’s mother (it turns out, he’s Latto’s mom’s “only celebrity crush”). When Latto is about to put her red Solo cup of tequila down for the shoot, Snoop tells her to stay true to herself, and keep it.
That juxtaposition of the glam and the down-to-earth — Latto clad in a GCDS dress and shoes, Laura Lombardi earrings, and a vintage Givenchy necklace while holding a house-party staple — points to why the 24-year-old is so magnetic. She’s stylish and regal, but she’s also got party-starting bangers like “FTCU,” which she and Snoop sing at the top of their lungs during the photo shoot. As she reveals during her hourlong conversation with Snoop, the Ohio-born, Atlanta-based rapper had been performing in talent shows since she was a child (and won The Rap Game reality show in 2016), which means she was already seasoned when she broke through with 2019’s Queen of Da Souf. Mariah Carey (and DJ Khaled) jumped on the remix to her single “Big Energy” in 2022, helping make it a smash hit, and Latto had her first Number One this year with “Seven,” her collaboration with Jung Kook of BTS. She’s on her way toward the stratosphere of stardom, which is why Snoop’s advice on navigating fame means so much to her.
Snoop, meanwhile, has become one of the most recognizable human beings on Earth since debuting in 1992, on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. (He first appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone almost exactly 30 years before this issue.) If you watch a sporting event, you’re probably going to see Snoop in at least one commercial. In 2022, he purchased Death Row Records, the label he’d helped build into an iconic brand in the early Nineties. He survived violent coastal beefs and has routinely reinvented himself through the years. Now, he’s a brand whisperer, runs the Snoop Youth Football League, and is a rap elder statesman. Hip-hop’s 50th anniversary isn’t just about celebrations — it’s about vets like Snoop giving upstarts like Latto raw and uncut game.
Latto: I want to tell you how I discovered you. You’re my mama’s only celebrity crush since I was a kid.
Snoop: Your mama put you up on the Dogg?
Latto: My mama put me up on you, for sure. And then my daddy was like, “Hold on, let me put you down.” My daddy a hip-hop head. And he loved West Coast [rap]. You, Cube, Dre, ’Pac: Them his [GOATs].
Snoop: How I got put up on you was [Atlanta DJ and radio personality] Greg Street. He was like, “Man, I’ve [known] her since she was a little kid. She used to perform in talent shows. She been a star.” I started discovering your music and I was like, “I like your style.” You’re gangster. That shit is fly.
Let me give you one of my secrets: I remain the biggest kid in the room at all times. Just keep the kid in you. Because that’s the inspiration.
Latto: Somebody told me, “Whenever you not having fun no more, stop it. You got to figure out what’s stopping your fun.” We blessed to be able to do a job that’s fun.
Snoop: It’s two funs that are the most important funs in the world: The funds that you make off of the fun that you have. That’s why it’s not a job.
Latto: If you could go back and change anything, what would you change?
Snoop: I’ve been asked that question probably about 50 times and the answer is always the same: I wouldn’t change a motherfucking thing. I love it the way it is. The good times, the bad times. All that shit sculpted me into the man that I became.
Latto: See, I’m in my head. I’m like, “Oh, I wish I would’ve did this. I wish I would’ve …” I need to bask in the moment and just appreciate.
Snoop: How did you get where you got? You didn’t get what you got with that attitude.
Latto: Right. Once you hit a new level, it just be “new level, new devils.”
One of my secrets: I remain the biggest kid in the room.
—Snoop Dogg
Snoop: If you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, niggas supposed to hate. Let the hate shit inspire you to do great. And then at the same time, the only way you could beat hate is with love. You can’t match they energy and try to [hate them back]. Nah. “I’m going to show you some love, I’m going to show you how I do what I do.” That’s how I’ve been able to prevail for 30 years in this music industry. Because there’s been times where I’ve been approached with hate and negativity. Sometimes I dealt with it on some gangster shit. And I was intellectual a couple of times. The business was more important. It wasn’t personal.
Latto: You know what somebody told me? “This game is 85 percent business, 15 percent talent.” That stuck with me ever since I was a little girl. It might’ve been Greg.
Snoop: He telling you the truth. But nowadays, talent isn’t involved anymore. They’re moving talent out the way because it’s overnight successes that they can make. That’s why when you really do have talent, you should hone it. Study the greats before you to see how you can stay here for a long time.
What happened to your favorite rappers in the Nineties? Where they at? Most of them gone. I’m probably the only one that’s still around. It’s because of the things that they did or the business opportunities that they didn’t capitalize on. So you got to be a smarter businesswoman and say, “OK, the women are winning right now in the music industry.” This is a first, for the women to be [in] the foreground.
Latto: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, too. How you feel about that?
Snoop: You’re the first era to actually dominate music. [But] you guys have to understand that here’s where the bullshit comes in. They going to make y’all fight each other. That’s what they made us do. They didn’t want us to join hands and say, “Hey, East Coast, West Coast, down South. I love your music.” You from the South. I love your shit. Why I got to hate you from down there? That’s what they’ll put into y’all Kool-Aid.
Latto: And we fall for the trap.
Snoop: But somebody got to be sharp enough to say, “You know what? It’s a business. Whatever personal issues we have, we can settle that.” Once we start fighting, the money get cut in half. When you’re peaceful, you can show up and get all the money you want. I could show up in any hood I want to right now.
Latto: They don’t got to worry about “If I book Snoop, I can’t book [this or that artist].”
Snoop: None of that. And that’s your business. You’re going to have opportunities where somebody going to book you for a wedding that’s going to pay you more than you getting paid onstage.
Latto: Bar mitzvah money.
Snoop: No, for real. I did a bar mitzvah for some kids that was, like, five years old. I’m doing the radio version. They doing the motherfucking dirty version. So I’m like, “Fuck it, we going to go dirty.”
What’s your studio routine?
Latto: Right now, I’m in a mode where [in the studio] I got the mic in the room, not in the booth.
Snoop: Like, “Where everybody at?”
Latto: Yeah, I want to be with everybody. I’m like, “Y’all fuck with that? If I say this, you know what that mean?” I might FaceTime my sister, “If I say this, do you get what I’m saying?” So I taking opinions, and I want to just go in there and have fun. I be sitting right there talking, drinking, smoking. And then I step right to the mic and let it all out right there.
Snoop: At my studio, I got a room called the Mothership, and it’s like a spaceship. I like it real dark and moody. But when I go work with Dr. Dre, this nigga got a microphone [outside the booth]. So, you got to rap with everybody right here. You say some wack shit or it ain’t right, nigga, you going to know right now. It’s pressure.
Latto: One thing about it though: When I got the mic in the room, I don’t like just let anybody in there though.
Snoop: This nigga have anybody in there.
Latto: See, that’s too much pressure.
Snoop: It’s pressure. And I like pressure. I want to be challenged. I’ve done so much, and I’ve re-created myself so many different times. What challenge am I up for now? Who can produce me and make me better, to where I don’t have to think of everything but just sit back and let you produce me?
My best advice that I lean on in a tough situation is to always put love at the center of everything. I been in positions where I had gang members and goons and goblins wanting to do shit to me. Instead of me answering the call [with violence], I answered with love.
There was a time in my neighborhood where certain OGs didn’t agree with how I was doing what I was doing. Tried to bad-mouth me. So instead of me going to the hood and “pop, pop, pop,” I went to the hood and grabbed some gangsters from the east side, the west side, the north side that had never been together before, and did a project and created a brotherhood. I just answered with love rather than let me go down there, show you niggas that I can keep it gangster. I can keep it business, and I can keep the homies alive.
Latto: I can use a few tips. It’s a growing process.
Snoop: The easiest shit for you to do is you.
Latto: I had my cup in my hand [during the photo shoot]. You like, “Nah, keep the cup.”
Snoop: That’s what I’m saying. You let them do you. I’m listening to your record. Your records say you be holdin’ red cups and shit. Now you want to put the motherfucker down?
Latto: Hey, baby, Solo cup me.
Snoop: Quit playing. Pick it up. You see me since we’ve been in this motherfucking interview, I’ve been blowing every minute on the minute. And they better not say a motherfucking word about my smoke tactics. Slide an ashtray over here and be courteous.
What’s your pre-performance routine?
Snoop: I like to listen to good fucking music in my dressing room.
Latto: You told me that. And I ain’t believe until you started singing some songs [of mine] you ain’t supposed to know. I’m like, “Hold on. How did he know that? How he know that?”
Snoop: It depends on [who’s around]. I got dancers that be twerking and pole-dancing. When they in my dressing room, I got to put on that ratchet shit. I’m like, “Fuck the club up!”
Latto: Right. I pray every time before I go onstage. I be like, “Lord, please [keep me] free from injuries or mistakes.”
Snoop: But you be really performing, though. You really going in.
Latto: I taught myself, “Don’t put no boundaries on yourself.” Because now, I’ll be up there dancing, and I swear to God I told them I ain’t had no rhythm in my bones, baby.
Snoop: I’ve seen you run out there with no shoes on. Kick your heels off like …
Latto: I’m calling my dancers like, “Somebody get these heels off of me.” In my comfort zone, I be making the stage my home.
Snoop: It has to be. Those are your people. They love you so you have to know that. Give them all of you every time you up there because you never know when it’s your last time up there. I give it my all every time I’m onstage. You can never leave a Snoop Dogg show saying that this nigga was playing.
Latto: You got to let me know what your favorite memories [are] around your first breakout, first album, first show, first everything.
Snoop: I had just did The Chronic with Dr. Dre. So that was his record, but it was the biggest record in the world. Everybody was waiting on my shit. As a kid I dreamed of having a record with me on it from top to bottom, doing the skits, the rapping, the talking. And to be able to do it with my family. I had my cousins, my homeboys — I had Dr. Dre, I had my best friends. It was the best feeling in the world — the niggas that I started with when I didn’t know how to rap good. Now, I finally figured this shit out, and we all on this ride together.
Latto: Oh, I’m very keen on that. Everybody around me, I known them either since middle school, elementary school. All my dogs that worked for me put their ass in position.
Snoop: Give me [details of] your first album.
Latto: I’m 20, 21 maybe? Figuring it out. Just signed my first major deal in the midst of the pandemic. So that was crazy. I’m recording a debut album and the studio’s saying, “Only two people can be in the room.” And I’m like, “Shit, that’s me and a producer. What about my sister, my people?”
So in the midst of all that, trying to figure out my sound, choosing beats without the producers there because it ain’t enough room. Beauty in the process, I guess. I’m learning the importance of energy, of feeling like you that girl, so when you get in that booth, confidence is breathing through the music.
Snoop: Everybody got trash music. I got niggas that got music on me. [I ask them,] “How much I got to give you not to put this bullshit out from 1987?” [They’re like,] “If you don’t give me $50,000, I’m putting out that song that you made.” … I started off as a songwriter, writing for Dr. Dre and writing for myself on the Chronic album. “Deep Cover” was the first song that I wrote. And then “G Thang,” “Dre Day,” on and on. But being a writer first: “I want you to win. You the star.” And then it was like, “Well shit, it’s your turn for your album. But the level that I wrote for him is so fucking high, I’m going to really have to do what I do.”
Latto: Put that pen to work.
[Hearing you] singing my song rocked my world.
—Latto, to Snoop
Snoop: I got so many [favorite studio sessions]. One that stand out to me is when me, Pharrell, and Stevie Wonder was in the studio. We smoking. We in a little-ass room. Pharrell’s done got high, he got secondhand smoke. Now Stevie in the booth and Pharrell ain’t saying shit. Stevie in that motherfucker trying to figure out what to do. I’m like, “Pharrell, produce this nigga.” This nigga’s so high, he leaves Stevie in the booth and don’t give him no direction.
Latto: He’s stuck.
Snoop: And I’m trying to tell Stevie what to do. I don’t know what the fuck to do. I’m not a producer. I told the nigga, “Just play anything.” When we finished, Pharrell took all of the good shit that he played. Because he was playing harmonica, singing and shit, and it ended up working. But it was funny to me that this nigga been around me this long, but today he finally gets so high that he leaves Stevie in there. They left a nigga in there, where he had to walk out by himself. Shout-out my nigga, Stevie.
Latto: Y’all ain’t have no camera in there?
Snoop: Hell no.
Latto: Oh, Lord. I had a week of sessions with [Pharrell] in Miami, and I kept [asking] him, “What made you want to fuck with me?” And he was just like, “I fuck with you.” As someone new stepping into the scene, it’s indescribable to be embraced by people who have already made it in your lane.
Snoop: The beauty of that is, the same way you feel about us …
Latto: It’s vice versa.
Snoop: When I came in, it was people like James Brown, Charlie Wilson, Ron Isley, Roger Troutman. These are people that embraced me. George Clinton, Bootsy Collins. They embraced me the way we embracing you.
And it was strange to me, because I grew up off of that music and I’m trying to be them, and then all of a sudden they know who I am.
Latto: That be like a real full-circle moment. Like where you got to damn near pinch yourself, like, “Is this really happening?”
Snoop: I sat down with James Brown for about three hours. He telling me, “Snoopy, you’re going be the hardest-working man in show business. You’re going to be this, you’re going to …” He’s telling me all of this shit, right? The most important shit he said to me was, he said, “Snoopy, whatever you do, don’t you ever cut your hair off. As long as your hair grow, as long as you’re going to be in this game.”
But he [told] me this shit and I’m listening to him talking, I can’t figure it out while he’s saying it, but as he passed away, I seen me become the hardest-working man in show business, doing all of the things he said I would be doing with the kids, with positive work, with creating opportunities. Branding, marketing, all this shit he said. It’s like I was touched because he embraced me, just like I’m embracing you.
Latto: And not just me. I see you embrace people, and that shit mean the world to us. Like, you singing my song rocked my world.
Snoop: But that’s what you did. You put that work in. You made it that good, to where I had to check for it. It was that good.
Latto: And one day … I hope to have longevity like you.
Snoop: You will. Your hair growing.
I was telling Latto earlier about the first time me and Rolling Stone had an encounter. Jimmy Iovine was getting at me and Dr. Dre about being on the cover, right? So at the time, I’m a hip-hop artist, I’m a gangster with this. I’m like, “Man, fuck the Rolling Stone, nigga, I want to be on the motherfucking Source magazine.”
And Jimmy was like, “No, no, you just don’t understand. It’s Rolling Stone. It’s the biggest shit ever. You guys are like Keith and Mick.” I’m like, “Who the fuck is Keith and Mick, nigga?”
So I end up doing this shit. The day I do it, I put my shit in some pigtails. Like, stupid gangster shit. I said, “Since y’all want me on the cover, I’m going to be a real nigga on the cover.” When that shit come out, a week later my record sold a million more fucking copies to a whole different demographic. To where I had to go and tell Jimmy Iovine, “I’m sorry. What other cover would you like for me to take?”
Latto: No cap. Because we come from a different world. And now you got my mama, a white lady from Ohio [like], “That’s my celebrity crush.”
Snoop: See? That’s what Rolling Stone did.
Who you want to work with that you ain’t never worked with outside of rap?
Latto: I just did my first acting gig, and I liked it. I was on Grown-ish. Shout-out to Issa Rae. I want to get in that world. Issa, hopefully, I’ll get to meet her. I didn’t get to meet her on set, but we briefly crossed paths at one of them award shows.
The queens like Issa, Queen Latifah, I want to get in that lane, because they’re sitting up pretty. They work when they want to work. I would love to get in that world.
Snoop: But you know what? You so hot you could create your own movie. A short movie. Don’t focus on three or four videos. Focus on the movies because you love acting so much. Control the narrative.
What’s your craziest fan story?
Latto: I don’t think you had your crazy-fan moment yet till you meet my mama.
Snoop: Misty, don’t do it. Don’t do it, Mama.
Latto: Listen, that alone fixin’ to rock her world. You don’t know.
Snoop: All right. I’m going to brace myself for this mama.
Latto: I went overseas for the first time this past summer. I was over there for probably a month. While I’m signing butt cheeks — like pull the pants down, g-string on, signing butt cheeks — I really got lost. I was finna put a kiss, but I’m like, “This is raw ass. You cannot put your lips on raw ass.” I was like, “Whoa, pump the brake. Reel it back.”
Snoop: But it’s crazy how they showed up for you though, right?
Latto: No cap. I’m like, “I’m going over there. They don’t know who I am.” I’m like, “Y’all know me in Poland.” Didn’t even speak English. I’m trying to tell them “I love you.”
Snoop: You got it going on, baby girl. The power of music is bigger than you could even imagine. There’s so many girls that want to be you now.
Latto: It’s crazy though, because I feel like I don’t even got it together yet.
Snoop: You do got it together. You’re inspiring to girls looking up to you. And now they discovering your story: “She really did used to hustle. She used to make tapes. Damn, so she just didn’t wake up as an overnight rapper. That’s why her shit sound different. That’s why it feel different.”
Latto: I leave all my history on YouTube, too. I was thinking like, “Should I clean my channel up?” I want them to see my come-up. Music used to be trash, but, bitch, now I got them M’s.
Photography Direction by EMMA REEVES. Latto: Hair by ASHANTI LATION for OPUS BEAUTY. Makeup by MELISSA OCASIO using CHARLOTTE TILBURY. Nails by ERI ISHIZU using APRES for OPUS BEAUTY. Styling by SAM WOOLF for THE ONLY AGENCY. Tailoring by CAROLINA GENCHIG. Snoop: Hair by TASHA HAYWARD. Barber: DONALD “DC” CONLEY II. Nails by QUISA for VERYVIP. Clothing design and styling by TALIA COLES. Associate Producer: VANESSA WILKINS. Video Director of Photography: ERIKA MORTON. Camera Operators: CHRISTINA CROPPER and PASCALE WILLIAMS. Gaffer: ELLIN ALDANA. Sound Mixer: TARA CATHERINE REID. Interview Editor: KIMBERLY ALEAH. BTS Editor: SASHA FOX. Lighting Director: BYRON NICKELBERRY. Photographic assistance by DOM ELLIS and SEMIR HAJDAREVIC. Digital Technician: MARIA TRONCE GIBBS. Styling Associate: KRISTEN RICHIE. Production assistance by PETER GIANG.