Rapper Snoop Dogg performs at the 2006 American Music Awards in Los Angeles, Calif. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

It’s rare for a soap opera plotline to electrify the blogosphere. Last year, it was a groundbreaking gay kiss on As the World Turns. More recently, it was the May 8 and May 9 episodes of One Life to Live. The show’s producers cooked up a plotline in which hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg drops in on the fictional town of Llanview, Penn., to perform a concert and share some trite dialogue with the regular cast.

Snoop Dogg, one of the biggest exponents of gangsta rap, playing to a home audience primarily made up of housewives — bizarre, right? To many, this was a novelty, but then Snoop has made a sideline of weird cameos. He has talked shop on Regis and Kathie Lee and gossiped with the girls on The View. He appeared in a General Motors commercial with former Chrysler president Lee Iacocca, and in a recent ad for a German cellphone company, emerges from a refrigerator, clad like a lounge lizard and crooning in Deutsch. (One of my favourite Snoop moments was the time he chewed the fat with Scott Oake during a broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada.)

If anything, the cameo on One Life to Live is proof of Snoop’s ability to enliven any event — be it a commercial, a movie, a sports broadcast, a lame talk show or a vapid soap. The question is, how did a convicted criminal and acknowledged “pimp” become one of the most endearing figures in pop culture?

You could hardly say it was planned. Snoop Doggy Dogg (aka Cordazar Calvin Broadus) grew up in the L.A. projects. His youth was marked by poverty and gang activity, which he would chronicle in song. His sly rhymes on Dr. Dre’s seminal album The Chronic (1992) generated huge buzz for Snoop’s solo foray, Doggy Style (1993), which became the first-ever debut to enter the Billboard Hot 200 charts at Number 1. Despite a loping, languid delivery, Snoop talked tough, portraying himself as a pitiless gangsta on the streets and in the sheets: “When I bust my nut, I’m raisin’ up off the cot / Don’t get upset girl, that’s just how it goes / I don’t love you hoes, I’m out the door.”

Flush with similarly ruthless, self-aggrandizing rhymes, his next two records, Tha Doggfather (1996) and Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told (1998), also debuted at Number 1. While the quality of his music has dropped off since Tha Last Meal (2000), Snoop remains one of the best-selling names in hip-hop.

Back in 1993, he was charged as an accomplice in the shooting death of an L.A. gang member named Philip Woldemariam. Although Snoop was acquitted several years later, it hardly ended his flirtation with the law. Since then, he has been repeatedly arrested for drug and firearm possession and put on probation for various offenses; this stuff follows him around like a bad scent. And yet he has lost none of the public’s good will.

That may be because, at some point, he began to indulge his inner ham. It’s impossible to pinpoint the shift, but the video for his 2000 single Snoop Dogg (What’s My Name, Pt. 2) feels significant. The song itself is one of his more inspired moments, a dose of woozy funk produced by Timbaland. In the video, Snoop plays a number of characters, all of whom are prone to a perplexing gabble, in which words are reconfigured to end in “-izzle.” (When he declares, “Your little frizzle is off the hizzle,” he means, “Your little friend is off the hook.”) This silly quirk wasn’t Snoop’s creation (credit goes to any number of Bay Area rappers), but he has been its great popularizer. That jive has become crucial to Snoop’s persona.

Since then, the Snoop D O Double Gizzle has been up to all kinds of nonsense. There he was, flying a giant blimp with Kirsten Dunst and Jimmy Fallon in a film spoof at the 2001 MTV Video Awards; in 2002, he starred in a sketch comedy show called Doggie Fizzle Televizzle; in 2004, he appeared as Huggy Bear in the parodic film remake of Starsky & Hutch, and later that year, as Captain Mack in the half-baked comedy Soul Plane. Yet in the majority of his roles — from the film Old School (2003) to dramatic series like Weeds, Las Vegas and Entourage — Snoop simply plays himself.

Snoop Dogg: gangsta cartoon. (Anthony Mandler/Geffen Records)

Most rappers nowadays do more than just record music — in the era of diminishing album sales, it pays to diversify. Jay-Z is president of Roc-a-Fella, a conglomerate that includes a record label, a clothing line and a film production company; in addition to stiff-lipped rhymes, 50 Cent manufactures clothes, vitamin water and condoms. Snoop has an entertainment empire, too, though it doesn’t seem quite as entrepreneurial. Whereas Jay-Z and 50 Cent promote themselves as corporate brands, Snoop has promoted himself as a living cartoon.

There are several reasons why this has worked. For one, there’s Snoop’s appearance: although he’s over 6’3”, Snoop is built like a twig, and his willowy body is usually swathed in an oversized T-shirt that looks more like a wind sail than a proper garment. Whether braided, styled or as a full-flower afro, his hair is a piece of living art. And then there’s his comically laid-back manner. Hip hop has produced a few such characters — Flavor Flav, Eminem, Kool Keith and the late, lamented Ol’ Dirty Bastard come to mind. But none of these have wooed public favour like Snoop.

Snoop has gone about softening his image, but in some respects, he remains unapologetically hardcore. Back in 2000, he got into the film biz, directing — but not actively participating in — his first porn movie (co-produced by Hustler magazine). To demonstrate how difficult it can be to balance the life of a gangsta and a good-natured pranksta, Snoop was set to appear in NBC’s A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie in 2002; his cameo, however, was cut. Apparently, NBC execs felt edgy about the concurrent release of another Snoop project — namely, his second skin flick, Diary of a Pimp. Snoop’s 2004 album R&G (Rhythm and Gangsta): The Masterpiece features a track called Can U Control Yo Hoe? The sentiment was no bluff. That same year, Snoop told Rolling Stone that he had been a bona fide pimp, claiming, “I had a bitch on every exit [in Los Angeles] from the 10 freeway to the 101 freeway ’cause bitches would recruit for me.” Snoop quit the life, allegedly to save his marriage. But in song, he is unabashed: “She say she wanna be an actress / So I pointed to these nuts and then I yelled ‘Action!’” goes a line in Deez Hollywood Nights, a track off his latest album, Ego Trippin. Same old Dogg, it seems.

Earlier this year, no less a moralist than Oprah Winfrey denounced Snoop as a “misogynist.” She may well be right. But while Oprah’s wrath brought down writer James Frey, it has had no discernible effect on Snoop’s career. Are his goofier pursuits meant to neutralize his seamy side? I’m not sure it’s that deliberate. If you’ve seen Doggie Fizzle Televizzle or the wickedly kitschy video for his recent single Sensual Seduction, it’s clear the man possesses not only a sly sense of humour, but a self-parodying streak. Naturally, his appearances smack of self-promotion — in that respect, he’s like any other pop star. But few are as doggedly charismatic as Snoop.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.