Calvin Broadus was born October 20, 1971 at the Los Altos Hospital in Long Beach, California, the second of three sons born to Beverly Broadus (née Tate). His father, Vernall Varnado, was a Vietnam veteran, singer, and mail carrier who Calvin says was frequently absent from his life. Calvin's parents nicknamed him "Snoopy" as a child because of his appearance and usually referred to him as Calvin at home. At an early age, Calvin Broadus began singing in Golgotha Trinity Baptist Church and playing piano; when he was in sixth grade, he began rapping. He attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School, then transferred to Jordan High School, and was convicted for cocaine trafficking and served six months at the Wayside County Jail. Snoop Dogg was a member of the Rollin' 20 Crips gang in the Eastside of Long Beach. Snoop Dogg's conviction caused him to be in and out of prison for the first three years after he graduated from high school. Snoop, along with his cousins Nate Dogg and Lil' ½ Dead, and friend Warren G recorded home made tapes as a group called 213, named after the Long Beach area code at the time. One of his early solo freestyles over En Vogue's "Hold On" had made it to a mixtape which was heard by influential producer Dr. Dre, who phoned to invite him to an audition. Former N.W.A member The D.O.C. taught him how to structure his lyrics and separate the thematics into verses, hooks and chorus. When he began recording, Broadus took the stage name Snoop Doggy Dogg. Dr. Dre began working with Snoop Dogg, first on the theme song of the 1992 film Deep Cover, and then on Dr. Dre's debut solo album The Chronic with the other members of his former starting group, Tha Dogg Pound. The huge success of Snoop Dogg's debut Doggystyle was partially because of this intense exposure. A short film about Snoop Dogg's murder trial called Murder Was The Case, was released in 1994, along with an accompanying soundtrack. However, by the time Snoop Dogg's second album, Tha Doggfather, was released in November 1996, the price of living (or sometimes just imitating) the gangsta life had become very evident. Among the many notable hip hop industry deaths and convictions were the death of Snoop Dogg's friend and labelmate 2Pac and the racketeering indictment of Death Row co-founder Suge Knight. Dr. Dre had left Death Row earlier in 1996 because of a contract dispute, so Snoop Dogg co-produced Tha Doggfather with Daz Dillinger and DJ Pooh. This album featured a distinct change of style as compared to Doggystyle, and the leadoff single, "Snoop's Upside Ya Head," featured a collaboration with Gap Band frontman Charlie Wilson. While the album sold reasonably well, it was not as successful as its predecessor. However, Tha Doggfather had a somewhat softer approach to the G-funk style. The immediate aftermath of Dr. Dre's withdrawal from Death Row Records, realizing that he was subject to an iron-clad time-based contract (i.e., that Death Row practically owned anything he produced for a number of years), Snoop Dogg refused to produce any more tracks for Suge Knight, other than the insulting "Fuck Death Row", until his contract expired. In 2002 he released the album Paid tha Cost to Be da Bo$$, on Priority/Capitol/EMI Records, which featured the hit singles and videos "From tha Chuuuch to da Palace" and "Beautiful" featuring guest vocals by Pharrell. By this stage in his career, Snoop Dogg had left behind his "gangster" image, and embraced a "pimp" image. Kool Moe Dee ranks Snoop at #33 in his book There's a God on the Mic, and says he has "an ultra-smooth, laidback delivery", and "flavor-filled melodic rhyming". Peter Shapiro describes Snoop's delivery as a "molasses drawl" and Allmusic notes his "drawled, laconic rhyming" style. Kool Moe Dee refers to Snoop's use of vocabulary, saying he "keeps it real simple...he simplifies it and he's effective in his simplicity". Snoop is known to freestyle some of his lyrics on the spot for some songs - in the book How to Rap, Lady of Rage says, "Snoop Dogg, when I worked with him earlier in his career, that's how created his stuff... he would freestyle, he wasn't a writer then, he was a freestyler," and D.O.C. states, "Snoop's [rap] was a one take willy, but his shit was all freestyle. He hadn't written nothing down. He just came in and started busting. The song was "The Shiznit" - [that was all freestyle]. He started busting and when we got to the break, Dre cut the machine off, did the chorus and told Snoop to come back in. He did that throughout the record. That's when Snoop was in the zone then."