So, here you have it: big Snoop Dogg lends his voice to TomTom GPS! We were absolutely thrilled to be approached by Snoop’s management company, Stampede: Snoop had heard all about how we created the real Homer Simpson celebrity voice for TomTom, and wanted to be the first real megastar on GPS. What a coup! We’d just released Homer and were looking at a number of opportunities – all cool but most likely to take a while to put together. One of the things I liked about Snoop and his team is how easy they all were to work with. We had a deal and a recording within 4 months from flash to bang! Now that is quick.

Grant, our creative guy, myself and Colin all listened to a lot of Snoop – interviews, music, musings – everything we could find before setting off to La La land. We immersed ourselves in his speech habits and idiosyncratic way of speaking and rapping. We wanted to find a level for the Snoop Dogg TomTom celebrity voices (for there are three: the US version and the UK and EU versions). What you don’t want is something mechanical and wooden that doesn’t reflect the celebrity’s character and style of vocal delivery. iFizzle, Snoop’s cool iPhone app (effectively a ‘soundboard’ containing well known Snoop phrases, BowWowWow, yippee-yi-yippee-yay and the like) was a good touch point; here was Snoop playfully delivering well loved Snoopisms in that wonderful warm drawl. This was it – we had it. We waited for the day we’d fly to LA to meet Snoop and record his voice…read about the journey to LA and the recording session in parts 2 & 3 shortly.

Best, Chrizzle.