Warren G

You may have heard of Warren G's half-brother, a Chronic-peddling producer named Dr. Dre. His Regulate . . . G Funk Era helped develop a defiantly West Coast sound of billowing bass lines and blunted BPMs. Regulators are encouraged to mount our Next Steps as well.

The problem with the breakout success of Warren G's debut album and its decade-defining single "Regulate" was their mile-long shadow over the rapper's future releases, regardless of how many skills they flexed. This includes the round-the-block stroll of "Gangsta Love," the minimal-string-section bounce of "Ghetto Village," the chest-puffing 213 reunion of The Hard Way, and the Snoop-aided, street-wise soul of "You Never Know." All of which sound like they were beamed from Long Beach back in the good ol' days of lowered 6-4s and backyard barbecues.

It's time to rethink Warren G's position as "that Regulator guy" when it comes to gangsta rap's bloody pop-music coup in the early '90s. He is, after all, a true O.G. (original gangsta, that is) — a post-N.W.A. mic manipulator who demanded the attention of Dr. Dre and Def Jam with 213, a Long Beach crew shared with Nate and Snoop Dogg. While the project quickly split into solo entities at the start of the '90s, its three parts were so revered by 2004 that the trio's official G-funk debut, The Hard Way, debuted at #4 on the Billboard charts. Our bump-first-and-ask-questions-later Complete Set explains why heads were down with Warren G in the previous decade even without his mentor/half-brother Dr. Dre at his side.