It has been an uneven battle in the rivalry between the hip-hop scenes of the American East and West Coasts. Many say that with big names like Run DMC, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan — all pioneers of hip-hop — the New York-centered scene has won the fight.

But what the West Coast lacked in inventiveness and ideological posturing (it was Public Enemy who wrote a song titled “F@#k Tha Police”), they made up in swagger and self-mythologizing. The basic rule for West Coast homies has been that if you have nothing to say, you better start talking or acting tough to impress your opponents — and the closer you are to death, the more popular you will be (hence the title of Notorious B.I.G.’s first album, long before he stared death in the face).

Being dead also helps and proximity to Hollywood also helped to build myth around hip hop idols, who in retrospect, created music that broke no new ground. Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac are probably most famous for being dead as for what their music has to say.

Rapper Calvin Cordozar Brodaus Jr., until recently known as Snoop Dogg, is a typical West Coast hip-hop musician who survives in the game by successfully building a persona that only a few in the hip-hop scene could imitate.

It is a persona built on misogyny, intentional goofball humor and stoner charm that allows him to achieve the status of the original gangsta, effortlessly.

Drop Snoop Dogg in a thriller movie — something that many directors have done — and you will have a whole different film from the moment Snoop enters the frame.

His brand as a porn movie director has been built around that goofball persona. A majority of his audience has been more interested in seeing what kind of dark, misogynist sense of humor Snoop has, rather than what the pornographic scenes have to offer.

Snoop Dogg: The performer went back into hip-hop mode after the opening song, the reggae-lite “Ashtrays and Heartbreak,” off his reggae record Reincarnated, out earlier this year. (Courtesy of OPCO Indonesia)
That’s probably part of the reason why fans did not take him too seriously when Snoop unveiled his plan to go to Jamaica, record a reggae album and change his moniker to Snoop Lion.

Many could be forgiven for thinking that going reggae could just be a cover for Snoop to smoke a lot of weed in a land where marijuana has gained a strong foothold as something religious if not spiritual.

The montage that was beamed on a jumbotron used to open Snoop’s concert last week in Jakarta
could probably sum up his true intentions.

As Snoop’s face was bathed in the colors of Jamaica’s flag, right underneath his haloed visage were two rolls of weed with smoke coming from the ends.

Snoop did not even bother to use the famous hash leaves that have become the shorthand for reggae legend Bob Marley and, well, for reggae itself. This is another way of saying that Snoop is only interested in the end product of reggae — the sparse guitars, deep bass lines, the dreadlocks and the weed — instead of being immersed in Rastafarianism itself.

To further reinforce the suspicion that going reggae or converting to Rastafarianism was a publicity stunt, Snoop went back into hip-hop mode after the opening song, the reggae-lite “Ashtrays and Heartbreak,” off his reggae record, Reincarnated, out earlier this year.

Well nobody came to the eX Open Space gig for Snoop Lion. Concertgoers came for Snoop Dogg, who they know for hits like “It’s the D.O.G.,” “Gangsta Luv”, “I Wanna Rock” and “Who Am I [What’s My Name]?”.

Soon after the first song, it was a typical hip-hop gig with deep, pounding bass, tons of scratchwork on DJ turntables and — this being a Snoop Dogg show — four scantily-clad dancers humping and grinding around Snoop.

Business as usual: <)