Snoop Dogg Turns “Lavender” Into Clownish Anti-Trump Satire

Snoop Dogg, BADBADNOTGOOD, and PrankvsPranks’ Jesse Wellens turned the original “Lavender” collaboration with Kaytranada into an incredible video that addresses today’s socio-political climate — namely the turmoil caused by Donald Trump.

The conceptual video, directed by the famous Youtuber Jesse Wellens, gives a hilarious, yet thought provoking satirical look into our world and its most critical issues such as police brutality, racism and the divide in our nation caused by Agent Orange.

READ: Faith Evans & The Notorious B.I.G. Feat. Snoop Dogg “When We Party” (Behind The Scenes)

Wellens, according to a recent interview with Billboard, says that the concept came to him during a weed session with Snoop Dogg in The Doggfather’s sprinter van during a video game event last October. He went on to explain what his concept represents and their intent in the video.

“I just had been seeing this go on in the world politically, and I actually was a cop for six years in the military, so I can kind of see it from the cop’s point of view too,” explains Wellens. “When I originally wrote the idea of the video, the video of [Philando Castile] getting shot came out online and it was causing riots. We just kind of wanted to bring the clowns out, because it’s clownery — it’s ridiculous what’s happening.”

He adds, “As America, it just doesn’t seem like we’re very respected right now.”

“Lavender (Nightfall remix)” opens with a clown father, played by Rappaport, waking up and getting ready for work as he eats breakfast with his family. On his way to work he sparks a joint but then he’s suddenly pulled over by a clown police officer. Similar to the Philando Castile incident, which directly inspired scenes in the video, the clown is shot with a glitter gun after showing that he had a squirt gun in his briefcase and a young black clown films it all.

Those particular images fits perfectly with the track as Snoop spits hard hitting bars like, “Trying to keep from dying in these muthaf–kin’ streets/ F–k the police/ From a black man’s point of view.

READ: Faith Evans & The Notorious B.I.G. Feat. Snoop Dogg “When We Party” (Behind The Scenes)

In the same interview with Billboard, Snoop Dogg elaborates on the art direction and concept of the video and how timely it is.”The whole world is clownin’ around, and [Jesse’s] concept is so right on point with the art direction and the reality, because if you really look at some of these motherf–kers, they are clowns.”

Snoop further explains his beef with Trump in the detailed interview.

“The ban that this motherf–ker tried to put up; him winning the presidency; police being able to kill motherf–kers and get away with it; people being in jail for weed for 20, 30 years and motherf–kers that’s not black on the streets making money off of it — but if you got color or ethnicity connected to your name, you’ve been wrongfully accused or locked up for it, and then you watching people not of color position themselves to get millions and billions off of it. It’s a lot of clown sh-t going on that we could just sit and talk on the phone all day about, but it’s a few issues that we really wanted to lock into [for the video] like police, the president and just life in general,” he says.”When I be putting shit out, I don’t ever expect or look for a reaction. I just put it out because I feel like it’s something that’s missing. Any time I drop something, I’m trying to fill in a void,” he says. “I feel like it’s a lot of people making cool records, having fun, partying, but nobody’s dealing with the real issue with this f–king clown as president, and the shit that we dealing with out here, so I wanted to take time out to push pause on a party record and make one of these records for the time being.”

And while he was not directly involved creatively, BADBADNOTGOOD’s Leland Whitty reportedly found out about the collabo via Instagram and expressed his appreciation for the video and The Doggfather’s involvement.

“I woke up one morning. Alex [Sowinski] had sent me the Instagram video and I was like, ‘This is crazy. Snoop Dogg’s probably one of the first rappers I ever listened to,’” he remembers. “It’s cool [for Snoop] to just turn something we didn’t have any emotional connection to and [associate it] with something so relevant right now … It kind of sounds like he’s rapping the way that he would in the ‘90s, and it brings out a lot of things that I haven’t really heard in a lot of his more recent music. So that was really neat, too.”