Over two decades ago, Snoop Dogg was charged with murder after a rival gang member was allegedly shot and killed by his bodyguard. Both Snoop and his bodyguard were later acquitted of the charge, but the Long Beach native says the experience had a lasting effect on his career.

In a recent conversation with Fatman Scoop on Instagram Live, Snoop revealed he changed the way he wrote raps when he beat the 1993 case after realizing how powerful his words were.

“… Around that time, me, Tupac, Biggie, [Ice] Cube… all of the rappers that was rapping around that time; we was writing what we was living,” Snoop told Scoop. “Some of us was writing life and some of us was writing death, but that’s what we was living.”

“On my second album, Tha Doggfather, when I beat my murder case, I redirected my pen to write life because I felt like I had wrote death all up until that point,” he continued.

The hip hop icon added that after beating the case, he no longer wanted to “glamorize and glorify” death, even if it cost him fans.

“When I started writing Tha Doggfather, I lost a lot of fans; I lost a lot of homies because they wanted me to keep it gangsta after beating the murder case,” he explained. “They wanted me to glamorize and glorify, but I was like, somebody’s life was lost. My life was changed. This is a real situation.”

Snoop clearly made the right decision, as the 49-year-old has now enjoyed an incredibly successful career spanning almost three decades.

Earlier this month, Snoop made headlines on the criminal justice front for asking Donald Trump to pardon Death Row Records co-founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris. Trump ended up granting the request, and Snoop was able to reunite with his old friend last week.

See Snoop’s full conversation with Fatman Scoop below.