by Dan Hoyle

Snoop Doggy Dogg, once one of the West Coast's most notorious rappers, but now more crossed over than an Allen Iverson defender, was slated to perform at NU on April 11. But lodi dodi, Evanston didn't want that type of party, so the show was cancelled. Why didn't it bother nobody?

By late February, A&O Productions had submitted their contract to the Campus Activities Office, confident of its imminent approval. At that time, they would announce the blockbuster show; with Jurassic 5 set to tear it off as the opener, A&O expected $35,000 in revenue and a raw performance for the crowd. But after clearing up schedule conflicts with Suitcase Party, a new cloud of haze and confusion descended upon its meeting with Campus Activities.

"At that meeting," says Dean Hanlon, A&O chairman, "I was told, 'By the way, [University Police] Chief [Saul] Chafin and the Chief of Evanston Police [Frank Kaminski] have a problem. Why don't you give them a call?"

Hanlon called Chafin, and was told he would not have the support of either the University or Evanston Police Departments at the show, without which a concert of that magnitude could not go on. Disappointed and "frustrated that they wrote it off so quickly," Hanlon called Sarah Alexander, A&O's director of concerts, and they collectively decided to cancel the show. Hanlon said he didn't try to get University or Campus Activities administrators to appeal the decision, explaining, "There are certain powers that be that you can't disagree with."

Chafin's pronouncement came as a complete shock, after UP had provided support for events of equal size in the recent past. Bob Dylan's Halloween show in 2000 sold 6,500 tickets, more than half of those to non-NU students, packing Welsh Ryan to the gills. Snoop's concert was to be similarly arranged, with 2,000 tickets held for NU students and 4,200 open to the public.

Chafin explained his rationale for not supporting the show. "You can't just think of those who have a ticket. You've got to think about those who get ticked off because they can't get in. You could have people out in the street, people hanging around, loitering. How are you going to handle that?"

The assumption that Snoop would create more unwanted loiterers than Dylan is questionable, though, as Snoop's once dog-tough demeanor has melted into a moneymaking mouse-ishness. His recent "Up In Smoke" tour – which also featured Godfatherly producer Dr. Dre and the shady-white Eminem – was called "the most peaceful and successful hip-hop tour in history" in a July 10, 2000 article in World Beat, an online music news magazine.

"If we thought there had been any concern, we would have gone through other channels, but it didn't even occur to us," said Hanlon, "Snoop sold out a long time ago."

On the tour, World Beat noted that Snoop performed on a mock-ghetto set "as evocative of mood as one of Disney's lands." Snoop wasn't concerting for Compton, but was honing in on the more lucrative markets of fans in Anaheim, Calif. or say, Evanston, Ill.

Why then was Snoop snuffed while Dylan security concerns were handled so easily? A&O Associated Student Government Senator Neil Shah is candid about pointing to the different "demographic," which is another way of saying race and class, that a Snoop show attracts.

But judging from the crowd that showed up at Snoop's other Illinois concert date – April 10 at Otto's Niteclub in Dekalb – such assumptions are again unfounded. "The crowd was 95-98 percent white college kids," Otto's owner Duff Rice said.

The specifics were different at Otto's, though. The venue only advertised in the Northern Star (Northern Illinois University's student newspaper), and sold its 750 tickets within two hours. Still, as Rice points out, "If you're paying $25 to $30 to get in, you're not going to want to get kicked out. Everyone's going to be on their best behavior."

After the smoothness of their Snoop show, Otto's general manager Justin Pierson admitted that the UP's decision not to support the NU show seemed "kinda shady."

Chafin was quick to deflect implied framings of his decision as racially motivated, pointing instead to the impact on the people of Evanston. "It could have been any major artist. It could have been Britney Spears," he said. "I have to be concerned with Evanston residents."

But when NU's men's basketball team was competitive, say in the Eschmeyer-elevated 1998-1999 season, Welsh-Ryan Arena would routinely pack in 7,000 fans on a winter weeknight. The Snoop concert would therefore be just like another basketball game, right? Shah made it clear that A&O would have paid for any additional security. "It wasn't a financial issue," he said. "I know that UP would have required state troopers, and we were willing to go well beyond that. We would have hired secret service, FBI, para-militaries, anything, to ensure that this concert went off without a hitch."

The decision seems to have stemmed more from administrators' perceptions that Snoop was not high-enough quality entertainment to justify the hassle to Evanston. "I'm sure [NU Vice President of Student Affairs] Bill Banis knew about [Chafin's decision]," Shah said. "If Banis allowed the show to go on, Snoop would have played. Chafin may not have agreed with it, but I personally believe he would have felt obligated to help us because of Banis' support."

Repeated calls to Banis' office last week were not returned.

Pierson may have hit on the biggest difference between the Dekalb show and the NU proposal. "We've got 66 miles of industry and cornfields between us and Chicago," he said, "Whereas in Evanston, you're an earshot away."

Is the conservatism that made Evanston the birthplace, and then besieged bastion, of the temperance movement rising from its grave? Or was it the case of image-conscious administrators pulling the plug on a long-retired thug? What conclusion can we draw from the acceptance of Dylan and the denial of rap's most original d-o-double-g?

Snoop is not politically progressive, but he's certainly a sign of the changin' times, both in music and American popular culture. For better or for worse, it's figures like Snoop, spreading style and slang to even the tamest of suburbs, or rap music in general, which Public Enemy's Chuck D dubbed "black America's CNN," that's helped shape this generation. Perhaps 30 years from now, when decades of touring have turned Snoop into an old, bitter and uncontroversial historical prize, NU will be proud to let him perform, and perpetuate a long tradition of Evanston's presence as a cultural museum rather than a contemporary and connected college town.

Dan Hoyle has his nose to the street. He can be reached at maltshere@yahoo.com.

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