The Iconic Influence & Mastery of Hip-Hop Legend Warren G

Photos by John Gilhooey

2015 has marked one of Warren G’s
most active years yet, and he is once again capturing a great deal of
pop-culture interest. He undertook a short West Coast tour following his viral
performance of “Regulate” on Jimmy Kimmel
Live! with none other than Kenny G backing him up. He made an appearance
with Snoop Dogg at Snoop’s Bush
record release show. He is a headlining performer at the upcoming Art of Rap festival at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, which will see him
playing alongside such legends as Ice-T, Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Quik,
Big Daddy Kane and others. Additionally, he is a
featured character in the impending, highly anticipated N.W.A. biopic, Straight
Outta Compton, and will be played by actor, Sheldon A. Smith.

Recently CULTURE was able to catch up with Warren and hear all about the
making of Regulate… G Funk Era and The Chronic, as well as his
current activities and his feelings on contributing
to mainstreaming
cannabis in American culture.

This month will mark
21 years since Regulate… G Funk Era
was released. Is it surreal to look back and realize it’s been that long since
it came out?

Yeah,
it’s hard to believe, man. It seems like it was just a couple of years ago, but
now it’s been 21 years. It’s like, “Wow!” And what trips me out about it is,
I’ve watched other artists, like my brother, Dr. Dre, Snoop, and those guys, go
and do their 20 years, and I’m like, “Wow, now I’m at that point!” It feels
good, you know, it feels like it’s the beginning still, I feel like I haven’t
reached my peak yet; you know, I’m still fresh.

Back when you
were writing and recording that album, did you have any feeling of the success
it was going to be?

I
didn’t think it was gonna be this big, man. But I knew that I was making some
good music and my formula was like, if it makes me feel good, then I knew it
would make the world, or at least the West Coast—where I’m from—feel good too. I’m
just a human, just like them, and music is based on emotions and feelings, so I
try to make a lot of music that feels good. That’s why my stuff is so mellow
and moody, because I want people to have fun, party and have a good time while
listening to my music.

What is it about
the album that you think has made it so timeless and has allowed it to remain
so popular?

Well,
I think it was just being different, just doing things nobody else was doing at
the time. For example, with “Regulate,” nobody would have ever thought about
doing rapping over a Michael McDonald solo. So I just wanted to be different. I
mean, back then, nobody had ever thought about using Gil Scott Heron samples, I
was one of the first artists to start using him in my music. Now, I see that
Kanye and a few other artists have gotten into him too, but I just happened to
run across his record way back, and loved what he was talking about, so I went
and bought all of his records and ended up taking a little piece off of one of
his tracks to use as an intro to one of my songs.

Courtesy Def Jam Records

Regulate…
G Funk Era features an
array of incredible, now iconic, samples. Can you tell us a bit about how you
discovered some of them and how you decided which ones to use?

Well,
I mean, I used to go and buy lots of records all around L.A. I used to go to a
place called, As The World Turns, which was a very popular record store for
movie and film companies. They had such a humongous archive of every genre you
can imagine. It was crazy and incredible. They must’ve had, at least, a million
records in there. I also used to go to Warehouse Records and buy old school
records from them. There was a record store in Torrance that I would go to just
to buy break records, just to hear the samples they had and see if I could use
them. Then once I got a chance to go to New York, and I definitely had a good
time shopping for records. I lucked up on a place out there called The Sound Library,
and it was a cool little secret spot that not too many people knew about. It’s
changed a lot with this digital world, now I’m able to listen to a bunch of
stuff online and rip whatever I hear that I like.

Do you still go
to record stores and go digging for new samples the old fashioned way?

Yeah!
Actually, lately I’ve been feeling like that and going back to square one,
instead of trying to get samples off of the internet. I’ve been thinking
heavily about going back to square one, which is hitting up the swap meets and
a few other places around here that have a lot of records. I’ve even been going
back down to Long Beach and going into the record stores I used to go to a long
time ago and just digging and digging, man.

Were you and
Nate Dogg sort of stunned by just how big the song “Regulate” got?

Man,
we was tripping! You know, because I think a lot of people were doubtin’ us,
and to see it blow up was just incredible. The feeling was great just to be
able to say, “Ok, now we’re part of this.” However, actually, we were already
able to set the bar with “Indo Smoke.” That was the first record that Nate and
I did along with another guy, Mista Grimm. So we knew that we had something
with that, but when we did “Regulate,” that took us to a whole new level. It
was actually kind of scary at first, just to know that there were people in
Russia or South Africa that were huge fans. It was a trip. We didn’t ever think
we was going to get that big, I mean, we knew we were going to make a little
bit of noise because the album was a good record, but we didn’t know it was
gonna grow like that.

The album
included a lot of references to cannabis, which at the time, was considered
taboo in popular culture, even in mainstream rap. Is it interesting for you now
to watch the general public and politicians coming around to legalize something
that you were criticized for promoting in the past?

I
mean, it’s just as good as getting a black president . . . it’s a trip. I mean,
just to see that this plant, that a lot of people were getting a lot of jail
time for, is now legal in certain states—it’s a trip. I mean, it don’t hurt nobody,
it’s never killed anybody. Even though there’s some studies that link it to
negative stuff, I don’t know if I believe that. I mean, if somebody’s been
altering the bud and putting certain chemicals in it, like they do with
cigarettes, then you might have that. But really, marijuana is pretty natural
and as long as you feed the plant good organic nutrients, then you won’t get
none of that extra stuff. I like it still, because it sort of opens up my
thoughts a little bit more. I mean, I’m not a chain smoker with it, but I like
to relax and blaze in the studio, or when I’m chilling at home getting ready to
watch the basketball game or play Xbox, I’m gonna smoke me a joint, so I can
chill and open up.

Do you feel like
your music, as well as music from your friends and contemporaries like Dr. Dre,
Nate Dogg, and Snoop Dogg, helped to erase some of the stigma that was attached
to cannabis?

Definitely!
I mean, The Chronic (laughs)! I mean,
that’s what it was. We was introduced to it this one day by this cat, and at
the time, we didn’t have a name for the album, and he had this stuff that was
called “Hydroponic.” But we called it “The Chronic.” So we would always say,
“Yo, I want some of that Chronic,” and that ended up being the name of the
album, and it fit perfectly.

Do you have any
events planned for the 21st anniversary for Regulate?

Well,
I’m gonna drop some all new tracks next month. It’s got a lot of me and Nate
Dogg; a lot of other cats, like E-40, Too $hort, Young Jeezy, Bun B, Problem—me
and him got a nice song together, I got Butch Cassidy, and I got Wiz Khalifa.

Do you try to
give all your albums a kind of cinematic quality?

Yeah,
definitely! That’s what I learned from Dre, and being around him as a young
artist in the game, was seeing the creativity that he could do with the skits. Then
he showed us how to do it and had us involved in the skits too. Just watching
him go from NWA to The Chronic, it
was a trip to be around, and he taught me a lot about production and producing,
which I’m still doing.

How did you come
up with term G-funk as a way to describe your sound?

Well,
I’ll tell ya. I was introduced to G-funk from a few friends in a group called
Above The Law, there was Cold 187um, DJ Total K-Oss, Go Mack, KMG The
Illustrator, and Laylaw, and they took me in as a young teen, I was maybe 15 or
16 years old, and made me a part of them. So I used to hang out with them a
whole lot, I even lived with them back in the day, and that’s when I became a
part of the G-funk, but it wasn’t out there yet like it is now. They were the
ones who started it, but I helped turn it into an international thing and I
helped turn it into a new genre. But those are my OGs, and I’m still, like I am
right now, giving them love for introducing me to it when I was a young teen. I’m
just another branch of it, my branch just happened to get real big.