The rapper is popping up everywhere at the games – and being his inimitable self throughout

“It don’t stop ’til the casket drop. They rocking and rolling; back and forth. Gimme that. No I need that. Nope, over here; nope, over there. What about over there… Way up in the sky – now down, back up, over there, now over here. Get out the way! Move, I told you, we need that!”

Was Snoop Dogg narrating a badminton rally in his liquid California drawl on your Olympics bingo card? Maybe it should have been: the 52-year-old rapper has become the Paris Games’ unofficial but much-loved mascot. On Saturday, he and his celebrity chef pal, Martha Stewart, turned up to the dressage events in full equestrian outfits. Snoop rocked an iced-out “S” broach on his lapel and fed a horse a carrot. “Their hair game is exceptional,” he said approvingly of the animals.

He’s been in the stands elsewhere too, wearing t-shirts printed with the faces of US Olympians like Simone Biles and volleyball player Kelly Cheng. There is he again, sunglasses lifted and eyes popping out while watching Biles’s unearthly gymnastics routines. And again, locking eyes and dancing with other gymnasts as they wait on court.

For all the fun Snoop’s having, he’s in Paris on business, as the American TV network NBC’s “special correspondent” for the Olympics. His love affair with the games started at Tokyo 2020, when he and Kevin Hart presented a NBC highlights show. Snoop’s viral assessment that the dressage horses were “crip walking” earned him an on-the-ground gig this time around.

And boy has he been making the most of it, with a private tour of the Louvre in which he stared down the Mona Lisa and was overcome by awe in front of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. He’s been getting involved in the Olympic tradition of commemorative pins, handing out some extremely sought-after ones of himself blowing smoke in the shape of the Olympic rings. He’s had a go at judo and got a swimming lesson from Michael Phelps. He even ran with the Olympic torch in the final stages of the relay before the games began, during which he managed to get his own brief crip walk in.

It was a revealing moment. Here is Snoop at the Olympics, the culmination of his second career as an affable media personality, and he throws in a reference to his beginnings in West Coast gangsta rap. Given how long his cuddly side-hustle has been going on, it’s easy to forget about Snoop’s origin story: his criminal charges and spells in prison; his claim that he was a genuine pimp at one point in his life. His first album was named Doggystyle and heavy on gang references.

Not every rapper from his era managed quite the same transition into the mainstream. Ice Cube, for example, was a bit unsteady in family-friendly films like Are We There Yet? before hitting his stride as a foul-mouthed cop in 21 Jump Street. But Snoop’s velvet-smooth persona was always ripe, with a bit of tweaking, for daytime TV. He’s cooked with Martha Stewart, done celebrity roasts for Comedy Central, appeared in dozens of films and launched hundreds of products with his name slapped on.

Through it all, he’s usually been in on the joke. There’s a dilemma for every ageing rapper: either you stay in serious-mogul-slash-musician mode, like Jay-Z, or you play your street persona for laughs on chat shows. Not everyone has the cachet for the former, and the latter, if you’re not careful, can turn you into a circus performer. But Snoop has played to his personality without compromising it. In 2022, he appeared at the Dr Dre-led Super Bowl halftime show – America’s national equivalent of an Olympic opening ceremony – crip walking in all-blue paisley. We haven’t seen quite such a street-coded outfit in Paris – he’s sticking with Team USA gear on the whole – but otherwise, the vibe has been the same: getting on to the biggest stages while remaining (mostly) himself.