Snoop Dogg's rap partners Warren G and Nate Dogg weren't his only classmates at Long Beach Polytechnic High School who also achieved stardom. A-List actress Cameron Diaz attended the school.

The veteran MC who performed his first concert as reggae artist Snoop Lion at the South By Southwest Music Festival Thursday, says he and Diaz knew each other and had friends in common. "She ran with my homegirls, all my little cheerleading homegirls," Snoop says in an exclusive interview with Yahoo! Music. “She was in [their] little crew.”

Snoop says that Diaz, who has dated Justin Timberlake, Alex Rodriguez, and Matt Dillon, has always had the "It" factor. "She was fly and she was hip," he recalls of Diaz, who began modeling at 16. "I never got at her like that because she was younger than me."

According to Diaz, Snoop hasn’t changed much since he was a teenager. "He was a year older than me," she told George Lopez in 2011. "I remember him. He was very tall and skinny, wore lots of ponytails on his head."

Snoop is now growing dreads since becoming a Rastafarian. He documents the experience in his film Reincarnated, which premiered Friday.

The artist, who has changed his name to Snoop Lion, says that a few turning points prompted his desire to make a pilgrimage to Jamaica and record his first reggae album, Reincarnated, due out April 23. "I believe there was a number of things, being one that I lost my homeboy Nate Dogg, just getting to being 40 years old, making music for so long, one style, wanting to always venture off," he says. "I was just feeling like now’s the time to put it into effect and turn over a new leaf. Try to do something different than what I’ve been known for."

For more South By Southwest coverage on Yahoo! Music, go to http://music.yahoo.com/sxsw.

Follow me on Facebook, Twitter.