Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and a huge joint get smoky on the MTV VMAs stage
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To be blunt, Snoop Dogg and Eminem's 2022 MTV VMAs collaboration was a total smoke show.
The two rappers' metaverse-inspired performance of "From the D 2 the LBC" — off Eminem's 2022 album, Curtain Call 2 — took the concept from their June music video and supersized it in Otherside, a virtual reality space within the metaverse.
The performance began with Snoop and Eminem relaxing on a couch while Snoop cradled an enormous joint.
"Hold on. Oh my God, bro, how'd you get that in here?" Eminem asked incredulously.
Snoop calmly replied, "I got connections. Don't trip." (Too late.)
Arturo Holmes/Getty Images Eminem and Snoop Dogg chill with a VERY big doobie.
Almost immediately, the smoke took hold, and as Eminem complained that it was going to make him relapse, the two were whisked from the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., into the metaverse, where they were digitized into hyperreal versions of themselves alongside the trappings of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, an NFT creation in Otherside.
As Snoop and Eminem morphed between their human and Bored Ape Yacht Club simian forms, a digital version of the VMAs stage blasted them through space, allowing them to perform on top of the MTV logo, from a convertible, inside a pinball machine, and at a pier being threatened by glowing-eyed Kodas, another Otherside NFT creature.
The metaverse portion of the performance ended with the two digital performers back on the virtual VMAs stage, rotating between the Detroit skyline — featuring the 313 area code and an "8 Mile" sign — and the LA skyline, with a 213 area code emblazoned across it. (For those wondering, the Long Beach digits are actually 562.)
After the rappers' real selves woke up on the couch, shrouded in smoke, they took to the stage to conclude with an in-the-flesh performance, although the fantastical worlds from their metaverse trip hovered overhead.
The Snoop-Em spectacle left such a lingering impression that a few minutes later, when Cheech & Chong — a.k.a. Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong — took the stage, Chong remarked, "It smells like Snoop Dogg."
"That's because it was Snoop Dogg," Marin replied.
"From the D 2 the LBC" is the second single from Eminem's second greatest-hits album.
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