"California Love" is released

Why it matters

The Roger Troutman talkbox hook on "California Love" is doing the heavy lifting on the chorus. Troutman had been the leader of the Ohio funk band Zapp through the 1980s, and the talkbox had been his signature instrument since at least "More Bounce to the Ounce" in 1980. The hook he plays on "California Love" is, structurally, a Zapp hook lifted onto a Dr. Dre G-funk track. The combination is exactly the kind of inter-decade funk transplant Dre had been pulling off across The Chronic and Doggystyle. What "California Love" does, beyond being a #1 hit, is consolidate the entire mid-90s Death Row aesthetic into one song. P-Funk-derived bass. Talkbox lead. Slow tempo. Tupac on the mic in maximum-charisma mode. The song was originally meant for The Chronic 2001 (it was recorded before Tupac signed to Death Row). It became Tupac's lead single instead because Dre and Suge needed the biggest possible record to announce that Tupac was a Death Row artist now. You can hear the gravity of that announcement in the production. The song is more important than it sounds. The song sounds like a #1 record.