Snoop Dogg‘s long-in-the-works reunion album with producer Dr. Dre will feature a couple of special guests far removed from the world of hip-hop they helped pioneer in the 1990s.
The multi-hyphenate revealed yesterday (Oct. 10) during an appearance at the Bloomberg Screentime conference that both country upstart Jelly Roll and rock legend Sting will appear on Missionary, for which no release date has been announced but is expected before the end of the year.
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“I’m so happy that me and Sting have a record that’s so good,” he said. “We hung out and we chilled. Like a child that’s infatuated with somebody as a singer, and you get a chance to meet them and they give you everything you expected. That’s what happens with me all the time: I meet people I’ve always wanted to meet and they’re everything I wanted them to be.”
As for working again with Dr. Dre, who was behind the iconic 1993 album Doggystyle, Snoop enthused, “1993 was the last time he produced a whole Snoop Dogg album. So this is a reunion, and it’s collaboration between two friends who genuinely love each other. We know we’re better together.”
Method Man, 50 Cent and Erick Sermon are among the other guest artists expected to appear on Missionary, which Dr. Dre told Entertainment Tonight in August would “show a different level of maturity with my music. I feel like this is some of the best music I’ve done in my career.”
During his Screentime interview, Snoop said Missionary will hopefully “put me in a position to probably have that final big stadium tour” and also referenced a separate project far removed from his usual hip-hop sound.
“I did a jazz album that I haven’t released yet,” he said, adding that he worked on the as-yet-untitled LP with the late Clark Terry, who mentored Quincy Jones. “It’s more or less like spoken word over jazz music. That was a genre that I’ve always wanted to go into.”
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