Jay-Z closed out his Jay-Z 30 series Saturday night by bringing Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre to the stage at a sold out SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, and the West Coast showed all the way up for him.
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The October 24 show was the second of two Los Angeles area dates and the final stop of a yearlong celebration marking 30 years since Reasonable Doubt dropped on June 25, 1996. Hov hit the stage around 9:25 p.m. and ran through roughly 90 minutes of a catalog that took him from Marcy Projects to the boardroom.
Then Dre and Snoop walked out together, and SoFi turned into a 1993 house party. The pair ran through “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang,” “Murder Was the Case,” “The Next Episode,” “California Love” and “Still D.R.E.,” with all three trading verses and hooks in front of a stadium that knew every word.
“Still D.R.E.” carries extra weight on a Jay-Z stage. Hov wrote it. He told LeBron James and Maverick Carter on The Shop that he even recorded the reference vocals for both Dre and Snoop, putting himself in character to match the way each of them rhymes. On Saturday, he got to stand next to the two men he wrote it for while they performed it at the close of his own anniversary run.
The building made the moment hit harder. SoFi Stadium is where Dre and Snoop headlined the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in February 2022 alongside Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar, with 50 Cent popping out mid set. Roc Nation produced that show, and Snoop later told Elliott Wilson that Jay went to bat with the NFL to keep it authentic, telling the league, “They perform or I quit.” Snoop also said Jay was the first person in his dressing room after that performance, hugging him like they had just won a championship. Four years later, the three of them were back in the same stadium, this time on Hov’s stage.
Dre and Snoop were not the only West Coast legends in the house. Too $hort made an early appearance and brought Oakland into the night with “Blow the Whistle.” Jay also worked tributes to the late Nipsey Hussle into the set, a nod that landed with a Los Angeles crowd that still holds Nip close.
The Jay-Z 30 finale played like a thank you letter to the coast that has shown him love for three decades. Snoop summed up the relationship back in 2022 when he described the two of them as the ones, with Jay holding down the East and Snoop holding down the West. Saturday night in Inglewood, both coasts stood on one stage.
