Snoop Dogg dropped into Warringa Park School to record a track with year 10 and 11 students.
When Ben Butcher’s music students at Warringa Park School suggested reaching out to artists they admired for collaborations, he didn’t expect Snoop Dogg to actually show up.
But after the hip-hop legend announced his visit to Melbourne for the AFL Grand Final in September, Butcher and his students shot their shot with a song called Drip and a cheeky Instagram video invite.
Snoop’s manager left a message on the school’s answering machine during the holidays. The school’s legendary receptionist Wendy checked it and was able to inform principal Ashwini just 24 hours before the planned visit.
Cue the flurry of phone calls, Department of Education meetings, and Butcher ringing parents to ask if their kids could come in for something pretty special.
Snoop Dogg x Radio On collab
- Warringa Park School, Melbourne
- 2025 album out now via Bandcamp
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“Everyone was beside themselves, and promising me they didn’t have a tear in their eye,” Butcher says of calling the parents.
Most students matched that energy, though one remained characteristically unfazed, telling Butcher he didn’t really care too much but was ‘happy enough’ for Snoop to come to their room and be on the track.
Butcher runs Radio On, a music project at Warringa Park School that’s been going since 2014. Every Thursday, he works with one group of year 10 and 11 students focused entirely on writing, recording and releasing music as artists.
Students make beats on iPads, develop musical ideas as a class, write lyrics and perform them in a studio setting with time for reflection and retakes.
“My music program with this class is to create music as any artist would,” Butcher explains. “So from a school curriculum point of view, it’s not just musical outcomes, but we’re developing literacy, self-reflection and personal development goals too.”
Drip was mostly written a month before Snoop’s visit, with students developing lyrics about dressing well for different occasions. When Snoop arrived, he made himself at home in Butcher’s studio classroom, made some jokes at the teacher’s expense, then listened to the track. For just 15 minutes, Snoop wrote and edited lyrics on his phone while his part played on loop.
“Then Snoop told us he was ready, and with a little help from his entourage on a technical matter, he stepped up to the mic and did his vocals in one take,” Butcher recalls. “He did a couple of backing vocals, and that was it. All killer, no filler.”
After playing the song back and dancing around the room, Snoop stuck around for photos, autographs and admired album covers from previous years’ work. His final line in the verse says it all: ‘Snoop Dogg came by to make you feel good.’
“We’re all still buzzing,” Butcher says.
Radio On works with students across a wide range of support needs, some who struggle to vocalise sounds or hold instruments. Butcher finds ways to engage everyone, recording their expressions and turning them into music they can enjoy together. Each year produces a small album of the best recordings, with occasional video clips added to the mix.
“Music education offers an approach to learning that is not the same as most other school based skill development,” Butcher notes. “Like other art forms, music is highly subjective and students need to develop their own sense of what works and what sounds good, rather than to learn what is right or wrong.”
His approach keeps students engaged by showing them they’re doing it the same way Ed Sheeran, Cash Savage, Doechii, Baker Boy and Kendrick do it. That even professional artists make questionable music sometimes, but they work at it and only release the good stuff.
Radio On’s 2025 album is out now via Bandcamp in an extremely limited edition CDR run.
Meanwhile, students are already working on their next invitation: Kendrick Lamar and Doechii.
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