Snoop Dogg suffers blow after Trump inauguration performance
Hip-hop star Snoop Dogg has seen a sustained decline in his social media follower count in the days since his decision to perform at an event celebrating President Donald Trump‘s inauguration.
Snoop Dogg, whose given name is Calvin Broadus Jr., was a featured performer at the first-ever “Crypto Ball” on January 17. The event, which was hosted by new White House AI and “Crypto Czar” David Sacks in Washington, D.C., was not an official inauguration event, nor was it attended by Trump.
The rapper, who was once a vocal critic of Trump, faced furious backlash across social media for his involvement in the event. And while Snoop Dogg responded to the criticism by saying in an Instagram video that he was “going nowhere,” many of his social media followers appear to have opted against sticking by him.
On January 18, one day after the Crypto Ball, Snoop Dogg’s Instagram account lost 59,458 followers, according to figures provided by analytics website Social Blade. The following two days saw a dip of 49,777 and 69,947, respectively.
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images for Godfather Entertainment;/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
His biggest loss of followers came on January 21, the day after Trump’s official swearing-in ceremony, when 85,317 accounts stopped following Snoop Dogg on the image-sharing platform.
As of press time, the California native has seen a continued decline in followers, ranging from single-day losses of over 16,000 to more than 45,000. On January 30, which is the last recorded date, Snoop Dogg lost 16,102 followers.
The figures show that the star has seen a loss of 592,620 over the past 30 days. While the data shows a downward trend, the “Gin and Juice” hitmaker still commands a sizable audience on Instagram with more than 88 million followers.
Newsweek has contacted a representative of Snoop Dogg via email for comment.
In a video shared on Instagram on January 26, Snoop Dogg addressed the backlash, saying: “For all the hate, I’m going to answer with love.”
“Y’all can’t hate enough, I love too much,” he continued. “Get your life right, stop worrying about mine. I’m cool. I’m together—still a Black man, still 100 percent Black. All out ’til you ball out or ’til you fall out. I ain’t going nowhere. I’m right here.”
Snoop Dogg’s appearance at the Crypto Ball marked a turnaround for the star, who previously criticized Black artists who might consider performing for Trump during his first inaugural celebrations in January 2017. In March 2017, Snoop Dogg released a music video showing a mock assassination of a Trump-inspired clown called Ronald Klump.
Condemning the video at the time, Trump wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President [Barack] Obama? Jail time!”
Despite his past criticism, Snoop Dogg’s stance on Trump has changed over the years. In an interview with The Sunday Times published in January 2024, the star said that Trump “ain’t done nothing wrong to me. He has done only great things for me. He pardoned Michael Harris. So I have nothing but love and respect for Donald Trump.”
Harris, who co-founded the Death Row record label to which Snoop Dogg was first signed, had been serving time for attempted murder and cocaine trafficking at Lompoc Federal Correctional Institution when he received clemency on Trump’s last day in office. This came after Snoop worked with activist Alice Johnson and producer Weldon Angelos to push for Harris’ release.
