Behind the Scenes of Snoop and Dre’s Coachella Triumph
A few nights before Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre closed out the first weekend of this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 15th, the rap giants held a final rehearsal on the festival stage in Indio, California. “The vibe was great,” says their old friend Warren G, who took part in the private rehearsal along with Snoop, Dre, Kurupt and Eminem. “It was just a family, laughing and talking, having a good time, going over our parts and clowning around – just like we used to work in the studio. It took us way back to how we used to get down together.”
Midway through the dry run, all eyes turned to the life-like Tupac Shakur hologram that the headliners had commissioned for Coachella. “I got emotional, just tripping off it,” says Warren. “I was saying to myself, ‘Dr. Dre, he always knows how to do game-changers.’ That’s what I love about him.”
Hologram Tupac proved to be the breakout star of Snoop and Dre’s hit-packed spectacular last weekend, performing two classic songs in front of 85,000 fans before dematerializing in a blaze of glory. Says Warren, “It’s like he came down to hang with us for a minute, let everybody know he’s good, and boom – he’s gone back to be a guardian angel.”
“Whoever was selling weed that night must have got rich,” Kurupt adds. “Because if you hit that weed and saw ‘Pac come out, you’d be like, ‘This is the best shit I’ve smoked in a while!'”
But the night was about much more than special effects for the rappers onstage. “Just being a part of it was life-changing,” Kurupt says. “We’re still doing it and we’re still doing it big. It was an honor, a historic situation. It’s a great thing to see the show in rehearsals, but it’s another to see it live and in action with the crowd and all of that. It was indescribable.”
Snoop and Dre’s success at Coachella – where they will return for the festival’s second weekend this Sunday – has sparked interest in a possible joint tour to follow. “Dr. Dre was ecstatic after the show, and that’s the key to the game,” says Kurupt. “As long as the good Doctor is excited, everything is good. He said, ‘You know what? We fin’ to put together something real proper, get back on the road and keep giving ’em these classics.'”
A source within Dre’s camp, however, says no definite tour plans have been made beyond this weekend.
“I don’t know nothing about a tour,” adds Warren G. “But if they do, I’m damn sure I’m going to be on it!”