Rappers and Hybridity: From Snoop Dogg to Birdman

Preeminent West Coast rapper Calvin Broadus created an extraordinary work of art in his now legendary hybrid animal/human alter ego, Snoop Doggy Dogg. His debut effort, Doggystyle, features an illustrated depiction of a personified hound reaching towards a female counterpart who explicitly props her rear in the air in the standard doggystyle position, which must of horrified my mother when I asked her to buy me the album nearly two decades ago (she refused).

Watching nearby, a few dogs narrate the scene with streetwise poetics from Parliament Funkadelic’s “Atomic Dog.” Why must I feel like that / Why must I chase the cat / Nuttin’ but the dog in me. The characters, all personified as dogs--besides the white “dog catcher” who is barred from entry to the inner circle of the story and the female may easily be a human woman wearing the bare minimum of a dog costume-- reflect a certain part of our own natures that could not so easily be described without the use of such metaphor. What is the dog within us? Has it always been there or is a new phenomenon pertinent to our generation? Can we control it? Do we grow out of it just like we emerge from youth? With this hybrid record, represented so emphatically by the cartoonish cover art, Broadus helped usher in a new era of hiphop music devoted to the cultivation of an imaginative altar ego.

However, few followed Broadus’ artistic direction of designing an avatar composed out of human and animal parts. Most of this generation’s rappers preferred Snoop’s charismatic, pimp strut appeal and singular wordplay. And for that reason, Snoop is still far ahead of his time. Before the internet had enabled the social phenomenon of furries, before comic book movies of batmen and catwomen would pervade the mainstream American conscience, and still before every teenager learned how to role play elves and dark elves on World of Warcraft, there was a 17-year-old kid from Long Beach who identified with a dog and made us see the dog within us. Or perhaps the cat.

Since the heyday of the Snoop’s early 90s vision, there have been very few rap artists who have engaged with the art of hybridity. After all, the creative ability and insight needed to evoke the other-animal nature of ourselves, or even to create new animal impulses, is a rare and exceptional talent. Nonetheless, I have come across a few brave artists who have since ventured into the uncharted territory of Deleuzian hybrid building.

The former baritone voice of LA hiphop act Jurassic 5, Chali 2na, took his nom de plume to the next level with his recently released album, “Fish Outta’ Water”. The cover arts displays a quite vivid transformation of Chali’s human features into the scaly brilliance of a fish. But perhaps the most legendary musico-hybrid of our time is New Orleans rapper and label owner, Bryan Williams a.k.a. Baby, a.k.a. Birdman. The cover art for his debut release in 2002, Birdman, shows the original style of a hybrid-like transformation of human facial features into those of an animal replicated by Chali seven years later. Birdman’s yellow eye evokes the futuristic eeriness of the Terminator while the lush feathers bring out his loving, fatherly sensibility that we all know from his mentoring of Lil Wayne. And together with the Clipse, Birdman concocts a terrifying pigeon brrr, straight from the dungeon and vicious side of his bird on the corner identity.

Finally, Hydra writer Mr. Medina pointed me in the direction of a largely unknown rapper, Big Bear, whose cover art absolutely blows everyone else out of the water (and that’s a death sentence for the Tuna). Like a hybrid of all the altar egos, Big Bear’s cover art spins the pimp centric ethos of Snoop with the emphasis of facial transformation present in Birdman and Tuna’s work alike. But Big Bear is not so much turning into a bear as emanating a bear essence, replicated ad infinitum around his presence like an aureola shining forth from a spiritual figure. Amazingly, this remarkable depiction sits temporally just in the middle of the others efforts, created in 1998. This goes to show that the creative possibilities of rappers and animal hybridity is far from being exhausted. And while hiphop is currently searching for a new direction, I’d advise artists to take the creative resources inherent in hybridity seriously. And that does not mean just jocking dub-step.

I stumbled upon the work of artist, Patrick Moberg, and his animal pharm in my research. Apparently others are just as fascinated by rappers and their animal spirits as I.

The video for Snoop’s “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” is playful, smart, and still unparalleled.