A G-Funk Retrospective on Doggystyle's 20th Anniversary

Remembering the 1993 LP Doggystyle and examinig its significance within the artform of hip hop in the post-Reagan and H.W. Bush-era war on drugs and recognizing its importance on American culture on its 20th anniversary.

Do you want to feel old? It has now been twenty years since Jurassic Park was released theatrically for the first time. In addition to Steven Spielberg's dinosaurs-running-amuck blockbuster, 1993 was a seminal year in pop culture for another reason. It was the same year that that the Dogg Pound was unleashed with the release of Snoop Lion's (then Snoop Doggy Dogg) landmark LP Doggystyle.

In the closing weeks of 1992 Dr. Dre released his solo LP The Chronic. On that album was the track "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" which came to dominate the radio and airwaves on MTV for the rest of 1993.

It was the world's first large scale taste of a sound that was new to hip hop and the gangster rap scene. It was a sound greatly influenced by George Clinton, both his solo work as well as his psychedelic Funkadelic Parliament projects. As Dre even tells you, he "flows some old funky shit."

It was also a sound that would have reverberations across segregated societal lines, and it was a sound which would attempt to reshape a lot of people's presumptions about what gangster rap was and what it could be. Whether or not it was successful in that immediate reshaping of presumptions and opinions is debatable, but over the course of time we can see that what it was attempting to do ultimately won out in the end. That sound they called "G Funk," and it helped turn a young Snoop Doggy Dogg into a star virtually overnight.

If it hadn't already been in the works before "'G' Thang," Snoop's own album was recorded over much of 1993 and released worldwide that November. With Doggystyle's release, the "G Funk" flow that Dr. Dre had refined the previous year on The Chronic had just gone and reached next level status.

Doggystyle was nothing like your older brother's gangster rap. For eight years rap music on both coasts was still greatly influenced by the ominous 1985 Schoolly D record "P.S.K. (What Does it Mean?)" which in turn helped give rise to the epic legacy that Boogie Down Productions and Eric B & Rakim gave us.

With crack cocaine having been injected into the communities of urban America in the 80s (we can thank Reagan and the CIA war against the Cuban-backed Sandinistas in Nicaragua for that) a new reality was emerging on city street corners that the urban underground arts movement was all too eager to offer their thoughts on via the medium of rap music. Whether it was in the projects in New York or the hood in South Central, it was only natural that hip hop reflect what was now taking place as a result of the coke incursion from elite white society into vulnerable black communities for the whole world to see. What the world saw was an angry, aggressive, ostentatious and at times vulgar art emerge. What else should have been expected? For almost ten years this was the reality of rap music and the reality that rap music was mirroring.

As there was no internet in 1993, larger pictures to be seen in this world were still safely sequestered via the global corporate media's segmentation of information. After nearly twelve years of Reagan and H.W. Bush's agenda-ridden "War on Drugs" there was a massive national hypocrisy being sold to America about what was going on and what the truth really was regarding: motives to make certain stimulants illegal, why calls for more prisons were being made, and why slowly militarizing the police was deemed necessary. The only ones truly speaking out on this new hypocrisy at the time were the Reagan-Bush era gangster rappers. If not directly indirectly through some of its garish lyrics, sounds, and images. Meanwhile, marijuana had been a schedule-1 substance since the Nixon era.

The chronic, indo, ganja, weed - it was a substance which had no glitzy glamorous aura associated with it in the 80s. Psychedelic substances, marijuana in particular, had been squashed in the late 60s and early 70s by sweeping legislative acts and was left forgotten by a large portion of the new music sub-genres that were taking shape. Cocaine was the fetish object of the music world as the 70s turned into the 80s. As crack cocaine seeped into impoverished black communities for the first time around the years of 1982-84, what the hip hop world wasn't doing in the wake of Schoolly D, Boogie Down Productions and Eric B & Rakim was give much notice to marijuana. After all, why would they? Weed wasn't the reality of the street. Crack cocaine was. Maria Juanita was nothing more than a faded memory. That was until Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre came along.

Snoop came from the game of dealing crack cocaine. It was an aspect of coming up in Long Beach he knew all about. Though he came from a coke-dealing background, he didn't write any songs celebrating the gang-banging cocaine-crazed lifestyle. "Murder Was the Case," "Serial Killa" and "Pump Pump" were three tracks off of Doggystyle that certainly reflected the cocaine-crazed realities of hood life - but those were tracks so dark they could hardly be deemed as celebratory. I actually suspect Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre had other motives for writing and producing those tracks, and even further motive as to where and when they appear on the Doggystyle LP relative to the rest of the tracks on the album, but I'll get to that at another time. The one track Dr. Dre and Snoop included on Doggystyle which dealt with the selling of cocaine was a rework of Slick Rick's "Lodi Dodi."

The tale Snoop tells in this pseudo-remake starts out innocent enough, but due to a deviation from the original narrative laid out by Slick Rick, Snoop's version paints a darker picture with crack at its center. There is nothing about "Lodi Dodi," or anything in Doggystyle, which really makes the gang-banging hard drug-dealing lifestyle seem very glamorous at all. You can play "Serial Killa" all you like, and yeah, it will leave you saying "god damn, that is a tight track," but if you simply read the lyrics as if it were written as a poem it'll leave you with the chills.

Snoop wasn't lauding the typical gang banging lifestyle on Doggystyle, he was celebrating human universals - actions and activities that everybody and anybody could appreciate: hanging out with friends, drinking booze, getting laid, making money and getting high. Before getting into how Doggystyle brought back the relevance of marijuana into popular music it is important to also recognize just how Doggystyle transformed American culture along racial divides.

Hip Hop had always been a point of fascination for white America. The success of MTV's "Yo MTV Raps" is a testament to this. But as much as hip hop fascinated young white suburbanites, the hip hop lifestyle was still something that a lot of white America felt alienated from to one degree or another. Certainly not all, but indeed most. There was something inclusive and inviting about the "G Funk" sound and Snoop's laid back tone heard on Doggystyle. Music had grown extremely segregated in the 80s and early 90s. Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre helped to get the ball rolling in terms of putting an end to that trend. Perhaps it wasn't done purposefully, but white surbanites couldn't get enough of what Dre and Snoop were doing in '93 and into 1994.

But to get back to it, the other factor Snoop and Dre were bringing back to the table in a big way was the rediscovery by West Coast hip hop of marijuana. Though Snoop wasn't drenched in gold in those early days, he does mention one piece of bling he carries with him on the Doggystyle album that was important, his "gold leaf." An ode to the symbolic heart of "G Funk" and a key to what it was trying to accomplish.

In the 60s and 70s, the world was seeing long standing racial boundaries present in certain aspects of Western culture, particularly music, dissolve amid all the acid and marijuana floating around. Then of course, as Hunter S. Thompson would have told you, that went away. The rest of the 70s and 80s did have a lot of good music to offer, but if was fueled by the industrious ethic inherent in cocaine culture. The music was also, as previously mentioned, extremely segregated. Doggystyle dissolved boundaries segregating middle and lower classes not just in its ability to connect with everyone by way of its sound, lyrics and flow, but in its endorsement of marijuana - a substance which brought people together more so than it would give rise to reasons that would keep them apart.

Unlike cocaine, which in a place like South Central L.A. would help keep communities divided over red and blue color lines, marijuana could be used as a weapon to ultimately obliterate those divisions. It being the early 90s, however, it was easier to lump weed in as just another horrible hard drug ruining communities. The idea that these marginalized "gangster" rappers like Snoop and Dr. Dre, among a few others, were promoting weed should have seemed contradictory - but again, it was 1993 and people were still zombified by the epic American failure known as the War on Drugs. So nobody knew better. Only now, 20 years later, is it apparent.

Marijuana was exactly the type of substance that could possibly be the answer to bridging gaps between the red and blue color line of the Bloods and Crips, but also the gap between blacks, whites, Hispanics and Asians. One so aquainted with weed and its powers, such as Snoop, would know that once an individual's ego is temporarily and repeatedly dissolved - which is what good Sativa and your occasional strong Indica strain of marijuana will do for you - gang-banging doesn't really seem as important as simply enjoying life for the more attainable pleasures it has to offer - kind of like what George Clinton's music was espousing. Not because you should set your goals and standards low because of where you're from or the color of your skin, but simply because it's not worth the price you have to pay to become your block's version of Tony Montana. That, and the fact that weed would offer a temporary escape and relief from the abhorrent existence of life in the hood.

Coming from the irate socially aware literatis that were N.W.A. it would make sense that Dr. Dre would perhaps see the need for a change in gangster-themed hip hop and started to move in that direction with his LP The Chronic. But it was Doggystyle that really hit the nail on the head. Doggystyle is an artistic and flavorful masterpiece of sound, rhythm, lyric and flow. Snoop and Dr. Dre really created something on the Death Row label that when closely analyzed could possibly seem as if it were designed to destroy everything that gangster rap mogul Suge Knight and his brand wanted to promote.

This is not to say that Snoop's character is beyond any sort of reproach. As much as I'd like to rewrite history and depict that what was going on at Death Row Records in the early 90s amounted to nothing more than Snoop simply being used as an innocent pawn in the evil mastermind Suge Knight's game of divide and conquer, it is simply something can't be revised that way. Snoop was deeply tied to the Crip lifestyle. Doggystle is also replete with symbolic nods to the Rollin 20s Crips, i.e. his "blue Chucks," the "blue coat," Harold Melvin and the "Bluenotes," the "blue" sky and his "blue khaki suit" (if you got an original pressing which contains the "Gz Up, Hoes Down" track) and it's not all peace, love and happiness. It contains veiled insults and threats aimed at rival Eazy-E and a not so veiled threat directed towards 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell. On top of all of that it's also more than a little misogynist.

Prior to the "G Funk" era, Snoop, Dre, and the rest of the Dogg Pound, there had never been anything resembling what essentially was an early prototype of psychedelic rap or psychedelic hip hop culture. Mainstream hip hop arrived long after acid and weed had been eradicated from mainstream society. The closest thing that could be related to such a concept were the aforementioned George Clinton funk songs of the late 70s and early 80s. The only mold Dr. Dre had to work from was that of what was most familiar to him: gangster rap. So that it still very much bears some of gangster rap's hallmarks should come as no surprise. What is surprising, however, is that if you listen close, Doggystyle wanted to be something more, something different.

Unfortunately, the world simply wasn't ready for progressive and experimental hip hop to blossom like it could have in the immediate post-Doggystyle era. It was still too soon after 12 years of hard line bullshit coming out of D.C. It was extremely popular in the small dose of The Chronic and Doggystyle, but that was essentially where it began and practically where it ended. Though Doggystyle did bring something different to gangster rap and hip hop in general I cannot say it necessarily influenced hip hop in its immediate aftermath. Doggystyle was more akin to a glorious blip on some radar screen out in the twilight zone; from whence it came and where it went we cannot fully ascertain. The internet was still a few years away from taking over our lives and traditional rap reflecting the culture of a straight out street hustling gang-banging lifestyle still had wind in its sails. Tupac was still only getting ready to blow up and Biggie was still relatively unknown by anyone but true hip hop aficionados as '93 came to a close. Once their flow started rolling in '94, the East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry was launched, snuffing out the metaphysical ideas that subtly rest at the foundation of what was Doggystyle.

In the twenty years since Doggystyle was released hip hop has certainly undergone a number of machinations and is as relevant today as it ever was. The difference being seen today is that what you're hearing in the far reaching aftermath of Dr. Dre's and Snoop's "G Funk" revolution (Dre's record label title seemingly now making even more sense) is more weed-centric hip hop. That is to say, hip hop which is designed to bring people together, hip hop which even branches off into unique never-before-heard sounds, hip hop which is armed with deeper understandings of truth and the larger picture at hand. That is to say, hip hop that is progressive.

Perhaps it took longer than producer Dr. Dre calculated, assuming this was a calculated effort on his part, but it has happened nonetheless. We've seen the development of horror-core hip hop on one level, suburban hip hop on another, experimental hip hop, etc. This isn't because lyrical masters in the 80s and 90s were less on the ball than those we see coming up now, rather it's because the 21st century came with it a populace of people already familiar with the internet. Not everyone was as up to speed with a Nas in the pre-internet era in terms of politics and truth. And with the internet has come the widescale phenomena of calling out hypocrisy. And with that calling out of hypocrisy has come back the relevance of marijuana. And with the relevance and return of marijuana/weed-culture we have less relevance being given to crack cocaine-culture. It's relatively simple when you connect the dots.

It's definitely harder to connect the branches on hip hop's evolutionary tree so that Doggystyle is seen as being a direct ancestor of these contemporary progressive forms of hip hop. That might be because there really is no direct connection. And yes, there still exists a controversy lingering amongst fans of hip hop - some don't necessarily care for the progressive directions contemporary hip hop takes, preferring the old school traditionl urban-street sound of rap. But turning our attention back to the significance of Doggystyle, we might say that it was destined to be the "Moses" of its art-form, never being allowed to enter the promised land - doomed by its own genius to have been so far before its time it is hard to recognize it for what it really was. So it will continue to be classified as "gangster rap." But what Doggystyle was if nothing else was a slight foreshadowing of what was to come. It sewed the seeds for a new hip hop landscape to be born and enjoyed by all. It showed artists how hip hop could grow when it otherwise might have been crushed had it remained stagnant.

Dr. Dre's "G Funk" together with Snoop's Doggystyle were in my opinion conscious self-aware efforts undertaken 20+ years ago, a recon mission if you will, to blaze a trail for what was to come far down the line after the gang-banging and cocaine fetish had grown obsolete in hip hop, which surely it must if hip hop was to ever remain relevant and not simply an artifact of its time.

Today I think we're seeing what Snoop and Dre hoped would one day develop: a de-segregated musical realm for the art of hip hop to flourish in. A key tool in the forging of this new reality: the chronic.

So on the overgrown once forgotten trail that had been blazed by the "G Funk" era and the Doggystyle LP almost a full generation ago, a trail which is still just barely visible and maybe even stops midway before reaching the intended destination, hip hop found its way to newer, greener and untouched pastures - nourishing the art form into something that will become harder and harder to marginalize.