All Doggs Go To Heaven

Image credit: Snoop Dogg photographed by Jeff Riedel

DOGG DAYS Snoop's recent projects span genres, from music to television to film

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''Ain't no fun/if the homies can't have none,'' Snoop Dogg famously rapped on his 1993 solo debut, ''Doggystyle.'' Well, here's a news flash: The homies can't have none. Step into the foyer of Chuuch, Snoop's unassuming-looking home studio in the quiet Los Angeles suburb of Diamond Bar, and amid the profusion of ''Scarface,'' ''Godfather,'' Jimi Hendrix, and Bruce Lee posters you'll spot a small, emphatic sign on the wall: ''No Consumption of Alcohol or Smoking of any kind at Chuuch. NO EXCEPTIONS! -- Bigg Snoop Dogg.''

In case you haven't heard, Snoop (né Calvin Broadus) has made some dramatic lifestyle changes. Yes, the grand pooh-bah of pot smokers, the guy to whom High Times gave its Stoner of the Year award last March, Mr. Gin and Juice himself, has forsworn intoxicants in order, he says, to be a shrewder businessman, a more supportive husband to Shante, his wife of six years, and a better father to their three children, daughter Cori, 3, and sons Corde, 8, and Cordell, 5. These days, instead of kicking the gong, he's kicking the pigskin -- as a coach for Corde's grade-school football team.

''I had to do it, man,'' Snoop told me a few months ago, when he was in the first flush of his new sobriety, with 20 chemical-free days under his belt. ''I was getting careless and reckless.... [I was] smoking three or four ounces of weed a day, drinking champagne and gin and this and that. Your body will begin to deteriorate if you don't take care of it. Superman couldn't even do what I was doing.''

Chuuch -- the name reflects Snoop's ghettoized pronunciation of the word ''church'' (sounds like ''chuhch'') -- is the most modest of the rapper's three L.A.-area homes, a slightly down-at-the-heels two-story dwelling that has the kick-your-shoes-off vibe of a funky neighborhood clubhouse. This mid-November day, Snoop, 31, is slouching in a chair in the living room, getting his hair braided into neat cornrows by a stylist. Nearby, Frank Sinatra, Snoop's lithe Siamese cat, keeps sleepy watch.

Dressed in a track suit from his Snoop Dogg Clothing Co. line, the lanky rapper somehow gives off an aura of being both hyperalert and utterly phlegmatic. He trains one eye on a big-screen TV while answering questions, speaking in rapid-fire declarative sentences, free of hemming or hawing, his musically drawling voice as hypnotic in person as on his records.

Now that he's getting to be an old hand at this drug-free thing, he's less eager to discuss abstinence. ''I ain't been counting,'' he says testily when asked how much clean time he's amassed. ''That's a personal decision that has nothing to do with the public, my fans, whatever. It bothers me when people ask me questions about it because it's not a publicity stunt and it's like, there's other things we could talk about. My record. My clothing line. S--- that matters.''