Interview: Sam Sneed For HipHopDx

As many of my fellow fanatical, 90's era Death Row fans know, Sam Sneed was a cat that was maybe a bit behind the scenes within the camp for awhile, but who no doubt had great potential. The beatmaker/sometimes emcee was poised to put out his own record right about the time shit started hittin the fan between Suge Knight and Dr. Dre...one of the many casualties of that highly publicized rift would be Sneed's immediate career in rap...

Seemingly un-phased, The proud Pittsburgher moved on with his life and has been living in the ATL in recent years...

Hip-HopDX.com caught up with him to delve into how he came to be in business with Dre and Death Row, what went wrong at the label, his shelved debut "Street Scholars" and yes, even the infamous incident in which Tupac allegedly assaulted (kicked him in the backside) is spoken on...

-BIG D O

DX: So, the obvious question, why didn’t Street Scholars drop in [1995/1996] when it was originally supposed to?

Sam Sneed: Well, that’s when Suge [Knight] and Dre was having their little issues, and it just got stupid after that. So if Dre wasn’t gonna be [at Death Row] – I mean, everybody went there because of Dre. So it didn’t even really make sense to be there if Dre wasn’t there. That was my whole purpose [in] going to California.  

DX: Now, you know what question that brings us to in the timeline of things, and I know you have to hate answering this shit, especially after 15 years, but as someone who’s always personally thought Tupac to be more misunderstood than maniacal, can you clear up once and forever what really happened that led you to leave Death Row, and what role if any ‘Pac played in that?

Sam Sneed: Well, it was basically [Suge and Tupac] was feeling some kind of way like – I don’t know, I think really, to be honest, it was Dre, man. It was Dre’s situation, how everything really unfolded with him [leaving Death Row that created issues for me]. Anybody who was a part of him, they basically had a problem with. They tried to use little excuses [to create issues with me] like me charging Snoop for a track, and all this other stupid stuff that we really never sat down [and discussed]. People was just doing business as business went on. It wasn’t like anything was organized. It wasn’t communicated like, “This is how everybody gets paid.” It wasn’t like I’m over there trying to [cheat them]. It wasn’t even like that, but they just tried to make it like that. Then they did that at a meeting for everybody to see. It was like, “If you ain’t a part of this, then we gon’ do this and do that.” Talking all crazy.    

 Read the rest here