I’ve not yet attempted to comprehensively evaluate my social capital or to map out my own sociogram. Even so, I know there are two degrees of separation between Calvin Broadus (aka Snoop Dogg) and me. We have at least three mutual friends that we each still talk to or visit annually.

Snoop and I came up in the same city around the same time and graduated from the same high school. We had plenty of mutual friends while we were teenagers. And, back in 1988 or 1989, you might have caught me beat-boxing for Snoop and other rappers while they would battle against one another lyrically in our high school’s quad. But even though one of his high school girlfriends was one of my high school girlfriend’s best friends, and he and I would bump into one another here and there during the late 1980s and early 1990s, we never became friends. Snoop and many of his closest friends were into some things that I was trying to distance myself from back in those days. The last time I saw Snoop face-to-face was the summer of 1993 at a small house party in Long Beach, CA. Those were his pre-Gangsta Rap Boss or pre-International Pimp persona days.

A few nights ago, while taking a study break (like the one I’m taking now), I watched Snoop’s new “Sensual Seduction” video for the first time. I wasn’t really feelin’ it on the first pass. Since then, I’ve listened to the song a few times more, and it’s grown on me. The song’s simple plot is based on some of life’s easy pleasures: sexual foreplay, sex, shopping, eating, playing in the sheets (and probably having a little more sex), smoking (for those who like to smoke), sleeping, and, then doing it all over again, making sure not to “rush the stroke.” Simple and to the point. It will sell a million copies no doubt. It uses a trope we all can relate to. And it’s a song about simple pleasures even the most enlightened among us should try to enjoy. I’m a fan of finding a good balance, and I believe limiting ourselves to too little bodily pleasure is no better than allowing ourselves to benightedly live lives devoted to the pursuit of appetitive pleasures.

So, I’ve connected with Snoop’s “Sensual Seduction,” for some of the same reasons why I connected with L.L. Cool J’s better “Around the Way Girl,” Andre 3000’s much better “Hey Ya!,” William Shakespeare’s even better “Sonnet 129,” and William Blake’s far better “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”

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