by Jeroslyn JoVonn
March 28, 2025
The report store that helped launch Snoop Dogg’s profession is taking strides to develop into a West Coast hip-hop museum.
VIP Data, the Lengthy Seashore, California, report store that performed a pivotal function in launching Snoop Dogg’s hip-hop profession is taking steps to develop into a museum devoted to West Coast hip-hop.
Kelvin Anderson, who has known as VIP Data dwelling for 53 years, pitched civic leaders, artists, and pals his imaginative and prescient to remodel the report store’s lot right into a multifaceted facility that includes a recording studio, printing house, restaurant, and stay music venue, specializing in showcasing rising expertise.
“Belief me, we’re planning on making some huge strides this 12 months and getting this museum challenge finished,” Anderson advised the Lengthy Seashore Submit. “So, the hot button is this location. We need to purchase this procuring heart. We need to begin proper right here.”
The March 25 pitch occasion was organized by the nonprofit Inventive Class Collective.
VIP Data is get pleasure from a resurgence of kinds. The long-lasting World Well-known VIP Data signal throughout the road, which has been designated as a historic landmark, is ready to be restored.
After present process repairs, the signal—which had been sitting in storage since 2018—can be put in on the southwest nook of Pacific Coast Freeway and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, immediately throughout from the unique storefront. Now, the objective is to safe sufficient funding to show the realm into an establishment devoted to exhibiting Lengthy Seashore’s function in shaping the mainstream music scene.
“I feel there’s sufficient love on the market for VIP Data to make this occur,” Anderson stated. “If I can get the proper couple of individuals to get behind me and if not write me a examine, simply assist market it.”
VIP Data is the place Warren G, Snoop Dogg, and the late Nate Dogg—then referred to as 213, named after Lengthy Seashore’s then space code —recorded their first four-song demo. After touchdown his first report deal, Snoop Dogg filmed a part of his iconic “Who Am I? (What’s My Identify?)” music video on the shop’s rooftop.
Anderson additionally famous that Captain Rapp and Disco Daddy’s 1981 observe “The Gigolo Rapp,” one of many first rap data, was recorded in Lengthy Seashore. Snoop Dogg attended the pitch occasion the place he expressed his help for the museum and guaranteed Anderson that he stays versatile relating to its location.
“I feel it needs to be there; that’s the birthplace of all of it, however, like I say, in the event that they don’t need to act proper, we’ll discover someplace we will put it,” he stated.
Lengthy Seashore Mayor Rex Richardson expressed the town’s help for Anderson’s museum proposal however emphasised that, for now, the precedence stays the refurbishment and restoration of the enduring storefront signal.
“This is part of plenty of landmark initiatives that we need to rise up within the subsequent few years upfront of the Olympics,” Richardson stated. “Even when Kelvin is ready to put collectively the museum, which I really like that idea, we expect this might match very nicely into the (metropolis’s) leisure technique, which has been type of how we tie our historical past and our roots into our future.”
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