Of Snoop and The Supes

May 7, 2008 – 4:48 pm

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: gang, Monterey Music Summit, Monterey Supervisors, Snoop — admin @ 4:48 pm

The Monterey County Supervisors narrowly dodged being forever known as “Playa Haters” when they agreed to let the (former) gang banging, booty-slapping, ganja puffin’ Snoop Dogg do his damn thing at the Monterey Music Summit over the Memorial Day weekend. The Supes had been worried about violence. Of course, they also agreed that the former Crips member and his roadies will be patted down, his vehicles searched, and oh, by the way, undercover cops are going to be flooding the event. But thankfully, the self-appointed don of hip-hop will be allowed to grace the stage and deliver his deteriorating, I-was-big-10-years-ago, perma-stoned performance.
Let’s back up here and look at what the Supes were really so concerned about in the first place. The argument for not allowing Snoop to play was essentially that, with gang violence on the rise in Salinas and outlying areas, any rapper that glorifies gangs visiting the area is going to cause opposing gangs to come together and result in a string of shootouts/stabbings/etc. in the middle of a densely packed concert. It’s an interesting take on gang psychology, more or less assuming that gang members function on a primal level that compels them to hurt or kill anyone they see from a rival gang.
It sounds like we’re poking fun, but this analysis might not be far from the mark. During Santa Cruz’s famous downtown Halloween celebration of 2005, there were seven gang-related stabbings and numerous other gang-related altercations. Up in Oakland, a concert by local rapper Juvenile in 2000 ended in a raid by riot police after opposing gang members began beating the living hell out of each other in the middle of a set. This wasn’t the first time this had happened in the area and a moratorium on rap concerts was swiftly instituted. The list of such examples goes on and on.
So, it might seem, shoving young men with a penchant for violence into a confined space is not a good idea, and Snoop Dogg is sure to bring out at least a few men with a penchant for violence. On the other hand, Salinas has been home to gang bangers for many years, and will continue to be a home to gang bangers for many years to come, whether or not Snoop Dogg comes to town. Gang members will find a venue for their turf wars and machismo battles just about anywhere they can, and the risk that they might chose a Snoop Dogg concert as a good place to have a gang war should not ruin the fun for the rest of the peaceful hip-hop lovers. Nowadays, Snoop raps a lot more about lighting up the chronic than shooting up the club anyhow, so perhaps these warring factions can all sit down and enjoy some music over the ol’ peace pipe. Is that naive? Who knows.
In the final analysis, the Monterey Supes made the right call by deciding to use metal detectors on concertgoers and increase the law enforcement presence during his performance, instead of punishing Snoop for a problem he has nothing to do with.