West Coast legends Warren G (real name Warren Griffin) and Snoop Dogg (real name Calvin Broadus) have been friends for over four decades and have worked extensively together throughout their careers. In fact, Warren G is the person who connected Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre. Warren G grew up in the same Long Beach neighbourhood as the ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ rapper, and the two have been friends since childhood.
During the late 1980s, the two MCs were recording demos, and one ended up in the hands of Griffin’s step-brother Dr Dre thus launching the career of Snoop. However, despite the fact that Dre was his step-brother, Griffin never signed to Death Row.
In an interview with LA radio show ‘The Neighbourhood’ hosted by Big Boy, the ‘Regulate’ musician was asked why, to which he responded, “I don’t know, I think it’s ’cause me and Suge used to bump heads a little bit.” In fact, Griffin and Knight had such disdain for each other that the Long Beach emcee was banned from recording at the Death Row studio in Tarzana and restricted from collaborating with artists on Death Row.
However, Griffin was determined to get Snoop Dogg and Kurupt to help him curate his debut album, Regulate…G-Funk Era. This meant that Snoop Dogg ended up writing music for Griffin under the nose of Suge Knight, pretending it was for him.
In a 2021 appearance on The Breakfast Club, Snoop explained how he wrote for Griffin as a workaround so he didn’t have to confront Suge, unveiling, “We was trying to protect the homie from Suge Knight at the time, Suge was taking everything so we wanted to make sure Warren G had a dope record without him being able to get it, so we silently, me and Kurupt and a few others, went to work for Warren G to make sure that his record could be what it was.”
Much to Griffin’s delight, with the help of Snoop and other West Coast artists such as Kurupt, Nate Dogg and Daz Dillinger, his album debuted at number two on the Billboard Top 200 with its lead single ‘Regulate’ being one of the most revered songs of the 1990s G-Funk era. You can hear Snoop speak about his ghostwriting in the video below.