Snoop Dogg made an appearance at Jackson State University in support of an HIV prevention event on Tuesday. GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, hosted a panel as part of its “Generation Z and HIV: Human Issue. Southern Solution. An HBCU Tour.” The rapper highlighted the importance of prevention and addressed past controversial comments about LGBTQ+ representation in entertainment.

Snoop Dogg raises awareness about HIV

At the panel, Snoop Dogg sat down for a conversation with Darian Aaron, GLAAD’s Director of Local News: U.S. South.

“A disease shows no prejudice,” the rapper said, according to Black Enterprise. “The best thing you can do is get protected, find more information.”

Aaron added the importance of the tour in helping share life-saving information with students.

“HIV in Black communities is far from over, and Black people in the South, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, or number of total partners, remain at disproportionate risk,” he said, according to WLBT. “The tour will help inform and protect students with essential knowledge about HIV, including that it is preventable with an injection or daily pill, as well as survivable and untransmittable when properly treated.”

The highest rates of new HIV diagnoses are in the South, with Black/African Americans and Hispanic/Latino people making up 70% of estimated new HIV infections in 2022. GLAAD also shared that 37% of people aged between 18 and 26 feel knowledgeable about HIV.

“HIV is nearly 100% preventable through knowledge, access, and care, yet the youngest generations remain starkly unaware of the basic facts that can protect them,” Aaron said. “The HBCU Tour is one way GLAAD is arming those most at risk with the information necessary to safeguard their health.”

Snoop Dogg emphasized the importance of prevention but also information about HIV as he shared his own experience with disinformation about the disease during the 1980s. 

“How do you treat it [HIV]? How do you prevent it? Hopefully, in 2025, there will be more information,” the rapper said. “There was no medical information to let us know what was going on. We were so scared, we stopped everything.”

Snoop Dogg addressed his previous controversial comments about LGBTQ+ representation in entertainment

In the summer 2025, the rapper was accused of homophobia when he said he didn’t know how to explain a scene portraying a same sex couple in the animated film Lightyear to his grandson.

“It f****d me up. I’m like, scared to go to the movies,” he said at the time, Blavity reported at the time. “Y’all throwing me in the middle of s**t that I don’t have an answer for… It threw me for a loop. I’m like, ‘What part of the movie was this?’ These are kids. We have to show that at this age? They’re going to ask questions. I don’t have the answer.”

He later addressed the controversy and shared that he has “always advocated peace and love and diversity.” 

“I had no understanding to a situation that was brought before me while I was with my grandson,” he said, per Black Enterprise. “But through time and experience and love, you learn to live and you get information, you find out how to understand things better. I have friends that are same-sex parents that reached out to me and gave me information on what did they say to their kids when things of that nature pops up and how they speak [to their children].”

Earlier this month, Snoop Dogg launched his own animated series for children, Doggyland, that features a same-sex couple and in which he raps a song titled “Love is Love.”

“‘Doggyland’ is a safe place where I can express things and teach kids, because I’m the biggest kid of them all. And it gives me a platform to give information that allows people to learn and live, and be a vessel of information to learn. The key is love. That’s the key to everything that we do,” the rapper said at the event.

Snoop Dogg has also recently partnered with GLAAD to support the LGBTQ youth anti-bullying initiative titled #SpiritDay on Oct. 16.