Warren G

Three songs from his second album, Take a Look Over Your Shoulder (1997), peaked within the top 40, as did his 1998 duet with Nate Dogg, "Nobody Does It Better". Both the album and its follow-up, I Want It All (1999), received gold certifications by the RIAA. His fourth album, The Return of the Regulator (2001), failed to yield his earlier commercial heights. Along with longtime collaborators Snoop Dogg and Nate Dogg, he formed the hip-hop trio 213, named for Long Beach's area code; they released the album The Hard Way (2004) to mild success.

His next two albums, 2005's In the Mid-Nite Hour and then 2009's The G Files, were released independently and self-produced. In 2015, he released Regulate... G Funk Era, Part II, an extended play featuring archived recordings of Nate Dogg, who died in 2011. In 2017, "Regulate", certified platinum in 1994, went multi-platinum, propelled by digital downloads.

Warren Griffin III was born on November 10, 1970, and grew up in Long Beach, California. He had three sisters and was the only son of Warren Griffin Jr., an airplane mechanic, and Ola, a dietician. They divorced when Warren was 4 and he lived with his mother and three sisters in East Long Beach until he was just about to start middle school.

In 1982, Warren went to live with his father in North Long Beach. His new wife, Verna, had three children from a prior marriage, one of whom was Andre Young, the soon-to-become Dr. Dre who in 1984 joined a leading DJ crew, the World Class Wreckin' Cru, which by 1985 doubled as an electro rap group, which in 1987 put out the Los Angeles area's first rap recording under a major label. By then, a Jordan High School student, Warren was playing football and running with friends.