Snoop Lion Talks Pimp Past: "It Was Never About the Money"

Erstwhile Snoop Dogg opens up to Rolling Stone about the "organization" he ran back in the day

Snoop Lion really was quite the dog back in the day.

"As a kid I dreamed of being a pimp, I dreamed of having cars and clothes and bitches to match," the reggae artist formerly known as rapper Snoop Dogg says in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. "I said, 'F--k it—I'm finna do it."

So, as he boasted on 50 Cent's 2003 tune "P.I.M.P.," that's just what he did—and not just by playing Huggy Bear in the Starsky and Hutch movie.

"I put an organization together," Snoop recalls. "I did a Playboy tour, and I had a bus follow me with 10 bitches on it. I could fire a bitch, f--k a bitch, get a new ho: It was my program."

But, to hear Snoop tell it, his style of pimping wasn't so bad...

"I'd act like I'd take the money from the bitch, but I'd let her have it," he says. "It was never about the money; it was about the fascination of being a pimp."

Through it all, Snoop's wife of nearly 15 years, Shante, "had to take a backseat to this," recalls the father of three, whose real name is Calvin Broadus. "And I love her to this day because she coulda shook out on a n--ga, but she stayed in my corner. So when I decided to let it go, she was still there."

At least that whole rap thing worked out for him in the meantime.