Chances are good that your recent Internet perusing has included seeing stories about History’s remake of the classic TV miniseries Roots, as adapted from the Alex Haley’s moving novel. Reviews have come in from all around, and while most have been glowing, there’s someone out there who has absolutely no interest in the reimagining or anything like it, and that someone is Snoop Dogg. Though he presumably didn’t actually see any advanced Roots screeners, that didn’t stop Snoop from sharing his blunt and absolutely NSFW comments. Check out some of them below.
I can’t watch none of that shit. I’m sick of this shit. How the fuck they gonna put Roots on Memorial Day? They gonna just keep beating that shit in our heads on how they did us, huh? I mean, I don’t understand America. They just wanna keep showing the abuse that we took hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but guess what? We taking the same abuse. Think about that part. When y’all gonna make a motherfucking series about the success that black folks is having? The only success we have is Roots and 12 Years a Slave and shit like that, huh? Fuck y’all, I ain’t watching that shit, and I advise you motherfuckers that’s real niggas like myself, fuck them television shows.
Snoop Dogg made his judgmental and angry views known via an Instagram post recorded when he was apparently not feeling very many good vibrations from the leafy green that he’s been associated with for his career. Seriously, he went the hell off in this rant, which didn’t just call out Roots, but also the Academy Award-winning 12 Years a Slave and WGN America’s Underground and pretty much any other TV series or movie that centers on that horrifying period in black history before slavery had been outlawed. He has clearly had enough of that particular angle from the entertainment industry, and would much rather see the small screen taking a more diverse look at others who have had more positive experiences within our culture. And it’s hard to argue with that point in the way that I generalized it.
But on the other hand, while slavery-infused epics have often achieved critical acclaim, it’s not as if they’re as common as police procedurals were in the 1990s. And shows like Black-ish and Empire (sort of) indeed show black families that achieve success in different ways. They’re needles in the haystack that is the current TV landscape, to be sure, but they and creators like Shonda Rhimes have become huge successes that are slowly inspiring other TV bigwigs to catch up. Not that anything will likely stop slavery narratives from getting produced in the future, but perhaps it’ll keep us all from living in a world where Snoop Dogg has TWO social media videos chastising TV shows.
Check out the full video below, keeping in mind not to play it too loudly wherever you are.
A known fan of certain TV shows, Snoop Dogg could very well one day put his (or someone else’s) money where his mouth is by developing his own show with a built-in set of morals and encouraging messages. Until then, be sure to check him out in the most recent season of Trailer Park Boys for a set of hilarious appearances.
Roots, the 2016 edition, will premiere on History tonight, May 30, at 9 p.m. ET, and will air its next three parts over the next three nights. Head to the next page to check out an extended trailer for the much-hyped remake.
