"Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" is released

Why it matters

"Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" came out November 19, 1992, as the lead single from Dr. Dre's The Chronic. Dre produced. Snoop Doggy Dogg (it was still his full name then) raps the first and third verses; Dre raps the second. The beat samples Leon Haywood's "I Want'a Do Something Freaky to You" and runs on the bass-and-synth template that the entire G-funk movement is built around. This song is the official arrival announcement of G-funk. The bassline is Parliament-Funkadelic-derived but cleaned up; the synth lead is a thin high whine that became one of the most-copied production sounds of the next five years; the drums are slower and bigger than anything coming out of the East Coast at the time. The song went to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. The video was on MTV every other hour for most of early 1993. Snoop, who basically nobody had heard of three months earlier, became famous on the back of these two verses. If you wanted to pick one song to represent the West Coast in the early 1990s, the song you would pick is this one. The bassline is doing most of the work, and you can hear it doing the work.