Hip hop icon Snoop Dogg is urging all aspiring musicians to embrace Twitter if they want to succeed because the platform has become the “number one” tool for any artist.

Snoop, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, credits Twitter with keeping him in the limelight.

“I feel it’s the number one key in music right now,” he says, “Having that relationship with fans where it’s not based on your record label, it’s based on you. When you are tweeting, it’s not about what label you’re on, it’s about you dealing with your fans directly.”

Snoop, who has over 3 million followers, has just released his eleventh solo album, Doggumentary, which features a diverse range of collaborators including John Legend, Kanye West and Willie Nelson. And with his fortieth birthday imminent, Twitter has allowed the rap legend to stay relevant within an industry that has a notoriously short attention span.

“It was all about making songs. When you get to the point I’m at, some would say, ‘It’s time to retire’. So you try to find a groove that feels good. Once you get it, then you stay at it. Whether you have a successful album or a label that supports you or backs you, there is a relationship with the people who make you who you are. That’s way more important nowadays to me because that’s what the industry is broken down into – trust.

“If I trust you and have a relationship with you, and you are telling me you are putting a record out and it’s going to be good, I’m going to buy it because I trust you.”