Songfacts®:

• Snoop Dogg links up with instrumental hip-hop/neo-jazz quartet BADBADNOTGOOD for this remix. The original "Lavender" was a collaboration with Montreal producer KAYTRANADA and appeared on their 2016 album IV. Snoop wrote the song over the BADBADNOTGOOD track after he heard it on his A&R manager's iTunes.
  
  "I had never had a song like that, so when I got back to the studio, I started skimming through beats, and that particular beat just seemed on the same page to get me going, so I wrote the whole song," he told Billboard magazine.
• The video features Snoop as a concerned observer of a society run by clowns. The clip's directors Jesse Wellens and James DeFina used clown imagery to make some points about American police brutality and the state of American politics.
  
  Wellens explained that he first thought of the video concept after the shooting of Philando Castile. "When I originally wrote the idea of the video, the video of [Castile] getting shot came out online and it was causing riots. We just kind of wanted to bring the clowns out, because it's clownery – it's ridiculous what's happening," he explained.
  
  Speaking to Billboard about the clip, Snoop said: "The whole world is clownin' around, and [Jesse Wellens'] concept is so right on point with the art direction and the reality, because if you really look at some of these mother---ers, they are clowns."
• The visual stirred controversy with a mocking scene in which the rapper fires a prank gun at the head of a president clown named Ronald Klump before dancing around and smoking as Klump is tied up in chains. President Trump shot back at Snoop Dogg, tweeting. "Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired a gun at President Obama? Jail time!" Others such as Senator Marco Rubio also slammed the clip, while Donald Trump's Lawyer said Snoop Dogg "Owes the President an Apology."
  
  Snoop Dogg told Billboard magazine that he wasn't looking for controversy. "When I be putting s--t out, I don't ever expect or look for a reaction. I just put it out because I feel like it's something that's missing. Any time I drop something, I'm trying to fill in a void," he said. "I feel like it's a lot of people making cool records, having fun, partying, but nobody's dealing with the real issue with this f---ing clown as president, and the s--t that we dealing with out here, so I wanted to take time out to push pause on a party record and make one of these records for the time being."