SNOOP ON THE ROAD: As Snoop Doggy...

SNOOP ON THE ROAD: As Snoop Doggy Dogg climbs onto the silver screen, the Long Beach rapper is also set to step onto concert stages for his long-delayed tour. He was originally set to be featured on a Dr. Dre-headlined tour last year, but that trek was scrapped, in part due to Dre’s own legal troubles (he’s on probation for a series of violent incidents and still must be at home by 9 each night.)

Now that Snoop will finally headline his own tour (with the group Jodeci also on the bill), the question some are raising is whether he has waited too long after the release last October of “DOGGYSTYLE.”

“His tour will be big but it would have been even bigger if it happened when the album had just come out,” says Wendy Day, head of the Rap Coalition, a nonprofit organization that looks out for the interests of rappers. “He’s almost at a point now of over-saturation. We’ve had a lot of Snoop in the past six months.”

The delay has also given time for some anti-Snoop forces to coalesce, Day adds.

“Pickets and protests are possible at his shows,” she says. “A lot of women don’t like what he says about women on his record. He’s different when you talk to him in person. But it’s what he says on this record that people react to.”

Other observers also fear that the fact that Snoop is charged with murder will bring out pro-police protesters who have in the past targeted such rappers as N.W.A., Ice-T and Tupac Shakur.

“There’s a lot of negative feeling about him out there in the mainstream,” says one record industry source who asked not to be named. “That feeling clashes strongly with the feeling in the rap community about him. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some trouble on the dates.”