Hear Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, & Jelly Roll Sample “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” As Tom Petty Once Prophesied

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Hear Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, & Jelly Roll Sample “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” As Tom Petty Once Prophesied

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Last month, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre officially announced plans to release Missionary the first fully Dre-produced Snoop album since the man’s classic 1993 debut Doggystyle. When the Missionary tracklist came out, it had an eye-popping list of guests, including Eminem, Method Man, Jhené Aiko, and the Police-interpolating Sting collab “Another Part Of Me.” It’s also got one track where both Jelly Roll and the late Tom Petty were credited as featured guests. As you might imagine, that song, entitled “Last Dance With Mary Jane,” is built on a sample of Petty’s song “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” which came out exactly one week before Doggystyle. As you might not imagine, Petty himself predicted that this exact thing would happen.

Snoop pointed it out on Instagram last night. Tom Petty appeared in The Defiant Ones, the 2017 documentary miniseries about Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. (Before Iovine became a mogul, he co-produced Petty’s 1979 classic Damn The Torpedoes.) In The Defiant Ones, Petty said, “I tell you, the day Dre does a version of ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance,’ he’s gonna have a big hit. That one’s just waitin’ to explode, but you need somebody like Dre to do it.” Petty’s eerie prediction did not mention Snoop Dogg or Jelly Roll, but you know he was thinking of them, too.

The whole Missionary album is loaded with big, obvious samples and allusions: Sly & The Family Stone, Pink Floyd, M.I.A. The “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” flip is pretty obvious, but it works well enough, and Jelly Roll sounds good singing his verse. I wish Dre hadn’t put filters all over Tom Petty’s voice, though. Listen below.

If we’re talking about rap songs that sample Tom Petty, nothing is beating Pimp C’s “I’m Free” anytime soon.

Snoop Dogg sounds motivated on Missionary, and Dre’s orchestral production was hitting really nicely when I gave it the car test this morning. I don’t know how many times I’ll return to it, but I was impressed. This Snoop line jumped out at me: “You know this shit could get ugly as Forest Whitaker/ Make your bones chillin’, you feelin’ all in your fibula.” What did Forest Whitaker ever do to Snoop Dogg? You can stream the album below.

Missionary is out now on Death Row/Aftermath/Interscope. In other news, Variety reports that Snoop Dogg will star in The Last Man, a new post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie produced by Luc Besson. Also, Jelly Roll won Top Hard Rock Song for the Falling In Reverse collab “All My Life” at last night’s Billboard Music Awards. Weirdly, Superheaven’s newly viral 2013 song “Youngest Daughter” was also nominated for the same award.

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