Snoop Says He's Out: Rapper's Company Fights Drakeo Wrongful Death Suit

Snoop Dogg’s legal team is making a straightforward argument in court: the rapper showed up, performed, and left—everything else wasn’t his problem. His company, Snoop Dogg’s LLC, just filed a motion for summary judgment in the wrongful death lawsuit stemming from the 2021 Once Upon a Time in L.A. festival, where rapper Drakeo the Ruler was stabbed to death at Exposition Park.

The declaration is pretty clear on the boundaries. Snoop’s company claims it never signed any lease or license agreement for the venue, held no ownership stake in the property, didn’t hire security, didn’t plan the event, and had zero involvement in the festival’s actual operations. According to the filing, no one from the company witnessed what happened to Drakeo, knew the assailants, or participated in anything beyond Snoop’s performance itself.

This is a calculated legal move that hinges on a specific distinction: performing at an event is different from being responsible for its safety infrastructure. Drakeo’s brother filed the lawsuit back in 2022, a few months after the December 2021 stabbing, arguing that security measures were woefully inadequate. The suit cast a wide net, naming Live Nation, LAFC (the Major League Soccer club), and other defendants. LAFC successfully won summary judgment earlier this month, and now Snoop’s company is trying to walk the same path.

The timing and strategy say something about how these cases play out. When tragedy strikes at a public event, the instinct is to find everyone with any connection and let the courts sort it out. But Snoop’s argument—that performing doesn’t equal liability—may have legal merit, even if it feels cold from a human perspective. Whether a judge agrees is another matter entirely.