Snoop Dogg blames Ronald Reagan for gang violence in LA during SXSW speech

Snoop Dogg recently made his voice heard at the SXSW Festival.

This week continues the SXSW Festival. Short for South by South West, it is an annual music, film, and interactive conference and festival held in Austin.

Snoop Dogg’s speech at SXSW Festival

During his keynote speech, Snoop Dogg blamed the 40th President of the United States for the culture of gang violence that existed in parts of Los Angeles, California during the 1980s and beyond.

“When Reaganomics kicked in, certain things were taken away, after-school programs and things of that nature. Guns and drugs were shipped into the neighborhood. So it was a shift of having fun and playing football to selling drugs and shooting at each other. To me it was a system that was designed, because when the Reaganomics era began, that’s when this began,” he describes life after a successful decade, in the 1970s, when “everything was beautiful because we had ways to have fun and communicate, and those who were underprivileged, the low economic side of life, the government would provide for us, which helped us get by. It was a society and we all needed it and we all had it and we all helped each other.”

What was he talking about?

Snoop was talking about an HBO show he is developing that will be about life on the West Coast during the 1980s.

Deadline reported that the plot centers on “a family whose seemingly idyllic life is turned upside down by the collision of their community and American politics.”

The Daily Beast reported that the hip‑hop legend said Reaganomics was “designed” to make life harder in the inner city.

Snoop said:

Early in the ’70s and toward the latter part of the ’70s everything was beautiful. We had ways to have fun and communicate. Those who were underprivileged, the low economic side of life, the government would provide for us. This helped us get by.

‘It was a society and we all needed it and we all had it and we all helped each other.’