Snoop Dogg mourns mother, Beverly Tate
Snoop Dogg’s mother, Beverly Tate, has died, the rapper and Long Beach icon announced Sunday on Instagram and Twitter.
“Mama thank u for having me,” he wrote in an Instagram post.
Another of his posts said: “Thank u god for giving me an angel for a mother. TWMA.” TWMA stands for “Till we meet again.”
Tate, a longtime Long Beach resident, was fighting an illness, according to an Instagram post from July 25.
Snoop Dogg made several other social media posts on Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok paying tribute to his mother. One Instagram post played his song “I Love My Momma.”
Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus Jr., did not reveal the cause of his mother’s death.
Snoop, now 50, was born and grew up in Long Beach. He fell into gang culture in his youth, but eventually made his way to international stardom, becoming an icon of West Coast and gangsta rap. He’s been a force in the popular zeitgeist for nearly three decades, ever since his debut album, “Doggystyle,” came out in 1993.
He is scheduled to perform with fellow hip-hop greats Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and Mary J. Blige during the Super Bowl LVI halftime show at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood in February.
Yet, he never forgot his Long Beach roots.
In 2019, for example, he rented out the Belasco Theater in downtown Los Angeles for an exclusive afterparty for his fellow 1989 Poly High School graduates, and charted a bus to take his former classmates to L.A. from the class’s 30-year reunion, which was at the Expo Arts Center in Long Beach. He spent the evening chatting and taking photos with his classmates, and performed with Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick.
Another Poly alum, former Long Beach Councilman Dee Andrews, has worked with Snoop Dogg to reinvest in the central Long Beach district where they both grew up. The Sixth District was dangerous and difficult to live in when Snoop grew up there, Andrews said.
But even when Snoop Dogg faced legal trouble and gang issues, Tate never turned her back on him, Andrews said. “She was a very protective mother,” Andrews said by phone Monday. “She was there for any and everything.”