Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang was the first rap song I heard and loved (via Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas). I completely appreciate why people would knock points off this for the misogyny and the juvenile humour. Alas, “Bitches Ain’t Shit” just hit different when you were 14 and hadn’t yet spoken to a girl. Dre and Snoop had the same effect as the Tate brothers - they let young men mask their anxiety behind machismo and aggression. Much less harmful than the Tate brothers though, as the defence was always that music isn’t to be taken literally. It was cathartic nonetheless. We all know that this doesn’t hold up today. But what does hold up is the seamless production, the social commentary and the g-funk. Dr. Dre single-handedly created the west coast sound which still comes through in rap music coming out the west coast today, more than 30 years later. Credit is due to George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic. In an era where intellectual property lawsuits were clamping down on the art of sampling and crippling hip-hop, George Clinton seen the future. Being an artist who owned his masters (very rare in the 90s), he let Dre use his material however he liked (for low-to-no cost, if I recall correctly). Dre turned the P-Funk to the G-Funk and the rest is history.