Source: Jason Merritt / Getty
To the surprise of many of their fans, rappers Snoop Dogg, Nelly, and Rick Ross headed out to Trump inauguration events over the weekend. Snoop Dogg performed at the first Crypto Ball on Friday night and Nelly is expected to perform at the Liberty Ball on Monday.
The Crypto Ball was hosted by David Sacks, who will be the new administration’s reigning expert on AI. It took place at the D.C.’s Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium. Ticket prices for the event went from $2,500 to $5,000 and the ball was billed as one to support the “first crypto president.”
While Snoop Dogg has been critical of Trump in the past, it appears he softened his stance on the incoming president once he commuted the prison sentence of Death Row founder Micheal “Harry-O” Harris.
In July 2016, Snoop Dogg posted a video on Instagram where he was shown smoking a blunt to YG’s and Nipsey Hussle’s “FDT,” which you can figure out the topic based on the song’s acronym. “We ain’t voting for your punk ass,” Snoop said at the time. In a video for his “Nightfall Remix” of BADBADNOTGOOD’s “Lavender,” Snoop shoots at a Trump impersonator.
In 2017, Snoop Dogg did a music video that showed a Trump-like character and criticized any Black performer who would show up for Trump. In 2019, during a federal government shutdown when workers were furloughed, he said in an online post, “All you people for the federal government that not getting paid right now, ain’t no f—-’ way in the world y’all could vote for Donald Trump when he come back up again. If y’all do vote for him, y’all some stupid motherf-ckers.”
Snoop said any Black artists that performed at Trump’s first inauguration was a “jiggaboo ass nigga” and now…
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— Loading… (@KirkWrites79) January 18, 2025
Apparently, the release of his homie changed Snoop’s mind. He worked on securing the commutation for Harris with Alice Johnson and producer Weldon Angelos. (Johnson was herself freed from prison when Kim Kardashian took up her case.) Harris was serving his sentence in California’s Lompoc Federal Penitentiary for cocaine trafficking and attempted murder when his sentence was commuted.
In a 2024 interview with The Sunday Times, Snoop shared his changing relationship with Trump, telling them, “Ain’t done nothing wrong to me. He has done only great things for me. He pardoned Michael Harris. So, I have nothing but love and respect for Donald Trump.”
But social media disagreed, blasting Snoop Dogg and Nelly across multiple social media platforms and sites. Soulja Boy and Rick Ross made an appearance at the ball, too. It appears that by hanging with Trump, Snoop Dogg lost a lot of the pop culture popularity, at least with Black people, that was solidified by his highly paid appearance at the Olympics last summer and his subsequent time as a judge on The Voice.
Nelly tried to explain his appearance at the Liberty Ball in an interview with Willie D. by saying that the military fought for people to have the freedom to believe what they want.
“I’m not doing this for money,” Nelly said. “I’m doing this ’cause it’s an honor. I respect the office. It don’t matter who is in office. The same way our men and women, our brothers and sisters who protect this country, have to go to war and have to put their life on the line for whoever is in office. So, if they can put their life on the line for whoever is in office, I can damn sure perform for whoever is in office […] I would ask [critics] to show me where he’s a white supremacist.”
Snoop has posted steadily since the performance but not with any footage of it. Instead, he’s posted various memes and videos that seem to be subliminally responding, including one about ‘people not really f-cking with you.’ All of his posts were met with hundreds of comments calling Snoop – and Nelly -everything from a sellout to an Uncle Tom.
See how social media is reacting to Nelly and Snoop below.