| Song Name - | "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" |
| Artist - | Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg |
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Dr. Dre is the scion of West Coast hip-hop, and the progenitor of gangsta rap. When Dre was beginning to explore the Los Angeles rap scene in the late 1980s he met rappers Ice Cube and Eazy-E, a former pusher who had founded Ruthless Records. When Eazy-E couldn't find groups— even those on his own label—who wanted to record his songs he joined forces with Dre and Cube to found NWA (Niggaz with Attitude), releasing their first album in 1987. Though often mentioned in same breath as Public Enemy, NWA's music contained few messages about black consciousness and social uplift. Rather, NWA related vivid portraits of the violence of gang life and the siege mentality that permeated day-to-day existence in the ghetto areas of Los Angeles. Straight Outta Compton (1988), with its aggressively hardcore gangland fantasies, quickly became an underground hit; the group reaped a great deal of publicity when the track "Fuck tha Police" made them the target of an FBI investigation and the ire of politicians. However, the track also displayed Dr. Dre's production skills to grand effect. Dre married the chaotic noise of Public Enemy's Bomb Squad to old school funk and Stax soul, creating a style he dubbed G-Funk. G-Funk made the nihilistic diatribes of NWA not only palatable, but almost irresistible. Their violent criticism of local law enforcement was vindicated when the near-fatal beating of African American motorist Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers was caught on videotape in 1992. Ice Cube left NWA in 1989, and Dre departed in 1991. His first solo album, The Chronic, was released on Death Row Records, a concern founded by Dre and Suge Knight. The Chronic was as dark and uncompromising as Dre's material with NWA, but his carefully crafted grooves combined funk, soul, jazz, and R&B in a way that made East Coast rap sound harsh and sterile. This extension of the G-Funk sound quickly became the sonic trademark of West Coast rap. The Chronic also marks the debut of Snoop Dogg. Dr. Dre met the rapper, then known as Snoop Doggy Dogg, through his stepbrother, Warren G; the two began collaborating almost immediately. Dre held Snoop in such high esteem that Snoop appears on almost half of The Chronic's tracks, including "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang." Critics—regardless of their opinions about gangsta rap— recognized The Chronic as a prophetic work that signaled things to come, but Dr. Dre did not release another solo album until 2001. After producing Snoop Dogg's quintuple platinum album Doggystyle in 1993, Dre focused on producing other rappers, which he had always considered his true talent. He split with Death Row Records in 1996 and signed an obnoxious white rapper from Detroit named Eminem to his new label, Aftermath. |
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"Let Me Ride"
