Snoop Dogg doesn’t hold back from airing his thoughts on President Trump in his new music video for the track, “Lavender.”
In it, directors Jesse Wellens and James DeFina depict an America where everyone’s a clown, including president “Ronald Klump.” The video bluntly satirizes current events, with President Klump at one point holding a press conference to announce the deportation of all dogs. That doesn’t go over so well with Snoop Dogg, who chains up the Clown-in-Chief and shoots him with a toy gun.
Actor Michael Rapaport features as a hardworking clown, who gets shot by a cop for smoking weed on his way to work.
In an interview with Billboard, Wellens explained the concept behind the video: “When I originally wrote the idea of the video, the video of [Philando Castile] getting shot came out online and it was causing riots. We just kind of wanted to bring the clowns out, because it’s clownery — it’s ridiculous what’s happening.”
“As America, it just doesn’t seem like we’re very respected right now,” he added.
Snoop praised Wellens and DeFina’s concept as “so right on point with the art the direction and the reality,” to Billboard. “If you really look at some of these motherf—ers, they are clowns,” he said.
Despite the provocative the nature of the video, Snoop insisted to Billboard that he didn’t make it to get a reaction out of Trump. “I just put it out because I feel like it’s something that’s missing,” said the rapper. “I feel like it’s a lot of people making cool records, having fun, partying, but nobody’s dealing with the real issue with this f–king clown as president, and the shit that we dealing with out here, so I wanted to take time out to push pause on a party record and make one of these records for the time being.”
The song, a remix of BADBADNOTGOOD’s song of the same name, will be included on Snoop’s next album, “Never Left.”