Rapper Snoop Finds Time for Spreading Holiday Cheer

“Snoop time,” grumbled the man standing in front of the hospital.

Snoop time, indeed. Snoop Doggy Dogg time.

The “gangsta” rapper extraordinaire, who is also an accused killer, was 45 minutes late and counting.

His stated agenda at the Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in Watts on Tuesday was to deliver Christmas presents to children in the pediatric ward. The presents had arrived long ago. They had been brought in on three carts and were already spread out on a table in the fifth-floor playroom.

But Snoop was nowhere to be seen as about 20 people, most of them in their 20s or younger, stood at the main entrance of the hospital looking for a car new enough and glitzy enough to be the rapper’s.

Instead there were clunkers, mostly, in this impoverished neighborhood. They fit the profile of the people making their way in and out of the medical center--limping old men leaning heavily on canes, women clutching their children.

Roland Holmes, the coordinator of organ donations at the hospital who watched with a small group off to the left, was decidedly unimpressed with Snoop’s excessive tardiness.

“Entertainers are much like civil servants,” he said. “Before long they forget who they work for.”

The movements of Snoop Doggy Dogg over the last two days had been touted as a joint effort by the Brotherhood Crusade and Death Row Records--which recorded Snoop’s fabulously successful album, “Doggystyle”--to engage in some highly visible good works. But it had all the earmarks of damage control, despite protests to the contrary.

The day before, Snoop and his entourage had been in Compton, handing out presents at City Hall. Another event was scheduled later Tuesday at the African Unity Center, where more presents would be doled out.

But there was also the matter of the murder charge. Snoop, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, pleaded innocent earlier this month in Superior Court to being part of a trio that chased down a man and killed him on the Westside in August. Snoop’s bodyguard, McKinley Lee, has been charged with being the gunman. Both men are free on $1 million bail.

At the hospital, a silver Lincoln Town Car pulled up to the main entrance--one hour and five minutes late--and Snoop, 22, emerged from the back seat. One of his handlers said that, among other things, the car had first mistakenly gone to the emergency entrance.

As Snoop walked into the hospital, a bevy of young girls began chanting “Snoop, Snoop.” They followed him inside, but bodyguards stopped them at the elevators. So the girls raced up five flights of stairs to the pediatrics ward, getting there only seconds behind Snoop. Again, the bodyguards took over and ushered the girls away.

As Snoop walked into the floor playroom, he said, “Hi, everybody” in a sweet falsetto and proceeded to settle into a game of Super Mario with one of the young patients. While the others addressed the small gathering, Snoop played. When it was Snoop’s turn to speak, he demurred.

“We got a game going over here,” he said.

Snoop and the others handed out toys before heading down the hallway to the other rooms. Snoop signed autographs as he walked. The president of Death Row Records, Shuge Knight, said the good works of Snoop and the others were only to celebrate the first real year of success for the company. Image, he said, had nothing to do with it.