Snoop Dogg is working on a gospel music album. The 45-year-old hip hop veteran hailing from Long Beach, California, is known for being a leading voice in the gangster rap movement in the '90s. In an interview on Beats 1 Radio last week, the rap mogul said his heart is leading him toward the gospel music genre.
"I'm working on a gospel album. It's always been on my heart," he said. "I just never got around to it because I always be doing gangsta business and doing this and doing that. But I just feel like it's been on my heart too long.
"I need to do it now."
Snoop, whose real name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus, already has ideas of some veteran singers that he wants to invite to the project.
"Me, Faith Evans, we talked about it heavily, because she feels like she wants to get down with me," he said. "All the people I know from Charlie Wilson to Jeffery Osborne, whoever I want to get down with. [We're going to] make it right."
Fans of the rapper got a glimpse of what one of his gospel music collaborations could sound like after he remixed gospel music artist Pastor Shirley Caesar's 1988 song "Hold My Mule" into a holiday song called "U Name It Holiday Anthem" last year.
In Snoop's version of the song, he raps over a DJ Battlecat production and uses Caesar's now famous line, "I got beans, greens, potatoes, tomatoes" as his hook. The rapper includes spiritual undertones in his rhymes while describing his holiday feast and making reference to gospel musician and broadcast personality Bobby Jones.
"Up early with Shirley in the kitchen on a mission with hams and yams mac and cheese for the chickens/ Collard greens is finger licking, me with the denim. Bobby Jones on the television/ Granny say grace for us and aunty making plates for us," he raps in the song that is available on iTunes. "We're the gift that keeps on giving praise God we keep on living. BC what you want me to say bow your heads for a second take a moment to pray."
The 78-year-old pastor and gospel music veteran enjoyed the Grammy Award-winning rapper's remix of her song so much that she featured it on her YouTube channel.
According to Caesar, even the church accepted the rapper's version of her song.
"I thank Snoop Dogg for doing such a marvelous job. Even the church accepted it," she said on OWN Network's "Where Are They Now" last year. "So thank you Snoop."
This article was originally published on The Christian Post.
