COMMUNITY
The Doggfather How the post office brought Snoop Dogg’s dad to Maricopa
W
HEN THE PIMP’S IN THE CRIB, MA. A gang leader-turned-film- maker channels Snoop Dogg’s
2004 hit single with his emotive biopic, and he’s ready to “drop it like it’s hot” next month — right here in Maricopa. The Villages resident Rob Boyd is known in town for his criminal rehab outfit The Streets Don’t Love You Back. What’s lesser known is Snoop Dogg’s mother, Beverly Tate, served on the Maricopa nonprofit’s board for a decade. Boyd, also a documentary filmmaker, pays her tribute with a new film capturing the family’s streets-to-stardom journey — one of military deployment, drug gangs and family drama through the eyes of a mail carrier in the Detroit projects. Boyd’s production studio No Way Out Films debuted with the autobiopic Trapped in the Hood in 2019 and spun at more than 100 film festivals around the world. The studio’s second effort, Detroit Mailman, turns the camera on the D-O-double-G family. Born Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., Snoop Dogg has been crowned “The King of the West Coast” by The Washington Post, Billboard and Vibe. ABC News journalist Paul Donoughue credited him with putting hip-hop in the pop music charts, leading to his induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame this year. The rap icon has more than 100 million followers on Instagram and X. And yet the celebrity and his family will come to Maricopa next month for a red-carpet premiere of Detroit Mailman before encores in Detroit and Los Angeles. Soul connection Boyd met Snoop Dogg’s father, Vernell Varnado, at Tate’s 70th birthday party in 2021. “That’s when I found out we were both from the east side of Detroit,” Varnado recalled. “He grew up right down the street from where I lived, in the projects.” Tate had a heart attack the next day and died shortly thereafter. It was at her funeral when the two men began swapping decades-old memories from the Motor City. As an ex-gangbanger, Varnado’s mailman story infatuated Boyd. It sounded like something straight out of a crime drama like Boyz n the Hood — and Boyd became intent on bringing it to the silver screen.
BY ELIAS WEISS
Rob and Lucinda Boyd pose for a photo at the MHS Performing Arts Center
InMaricopa.com | December 2023
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