Track Suits, Pot and Shades: Snoop Dogg's THR Cover Shoot (Video)

Snoop Dogg reflected on his recent reinvention as Snoop Lion during his THR cover shoot, where he revealed it was as much a spiritual transformation as it was a musical one.

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“The transition from Snoop Dogg to Snoop Lion has a lot of people curious to understand why,” the rapper tells THR. “That was the purpose of me documenting through my movie, Reincarnated, so people could understand the reason why.”

Reincarnated, directed by Vice magazine editor Andy Capper, documents the recording of Snoop’s upcoming reggae album in Jamaica, and looks at the rapper’s transformation from Dogg to Lion.

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"It wasn’t just me just waking up one morning and saying ‘I don’t want to be the Dogg no more, I want to be a lion,’” says Snoop, who also serves as CEO of Snoopadelic Films. “It was about the growth of a person—of a man—and the spirituality of the person that’s going to the next level.”

Snoop's growth has sprouted new collaborations, including one with Polish artist Iza Lach, whom he discovered through a contest held on SoundCloud for someone to add to one of Snoop's songs.

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“It was just something about her voice that stood out—the way she added to the track,” he says.  Snoop met with her in Poland and signed her to a five-record deal.

The rapper also spoke of the Snoop Youth Football League, a non-profit organization he founded to give at-risk youth the opportunity to get involved with the sport. He says alums of the group are now playing in college, and one is playing in the NFL.

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“It’s a beautiful situation to be able to give back and see it evolve—to see what happens when you plant a seed and water it, and continue to take care of it,” Snoop Lion says.

For a look behind the scenes of Snoop Lion’s THR cover shoot, watch the video above.