Warren G ft. Nate Dogg – Regulate
1994
2.6M Likes
Best comments
1.“Nate Dogg was the only man who could sing about icing a dude and make it sound beautiful.”
More comments
- 2.“This song was so far ahead of its time: the rapper showing his sensitive side, and the singer showing his gangster side. Untouchable.”
- 3.“As a 50-year-old white man, I embarrassed my son every day on the way to school singing this. Classics never die.”
The story
Regulate is a whole crime movie in four minutes. Warren G gets robbed in Long Beach, Nate Dogg rolls up and handles it, and then the two of them go looking for some ladies. That's the plot. The story is gritty. The music is smooth as a Sunday drive.
That's because Warren G built the beat on a four-bar loop of Michael McDonald's I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near), with bits of Bob James and Dr. Dre's Let Me Ride stirred in. Yacht rock under a stickup. It shouldn't work. It's one of the best records of the '90s.
It came out in spring 1994 on the soundtrack for Above the Rim, the Harlem basketball drama with Tupac Shakur as a local thug named Birdie, and then anchored Warren G's debut album Regulate... G Funk Era. The video is built mostly from the movie's footage with new scenes added, which is how Tupac ends up in it. Nate Dogg, the voice of the hook, isn't in it at all. A dispute between Death Row's Suge Knight and Def Jam kept him out.
It hit number two on the Billboard Hot 100, went double platinum in the US, became Def Jam's biggest single and got a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. Years later the Yacht Rock web series worked it into an episode. Michael McDonald, G-funk legend. Who knew.
