Warren Griffin III (born November 10, 1970) is an American rapper, record producer and DJ. He is known for his role in popularizing West Coast hip hop during the 1990s, and is credited as a pioneer of its subgenre G-funk.
Griffin attained mainstream success with his 1994 single "Regulate" (featuring Nate Dogg), which peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. His debut album, Regulate... G Funk Era (1994), debuted at number 2 on the U.S. Billboard 200, selling 176,000 in its first week. It has since received triple Platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), signifying sales of three million copies. "Regulate" spent 18 weeks within the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, with three weeks at number 2, while its follow-up, "This D.J.", peaked at number 9. At the 37th Annual Grammy Awards, both songs received nominations for Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Solo Performance.
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), was less of a success. Along with longtime collaborators Snoop Dogg and Nate Dogg, he formed the hip-hop trio 213, named for Long Beach, California'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.
He is credited with discovering Snoop Dogg, having introduced the rapper to record producer Dr. Dre. In 2015, he released Regulate... G Funk Era, Part II, an extended play featuring archived recordings of Nate Dogg, who died in 2011.
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. His parents divorced when Griffin was four, and he lived with his mother and three sisters in East Long Beach.
In 1982, Griffin went to live with his father in North Long Beach. His new stepmother, Verna, had three children from a prior marriage, one of whom was Andre Young (Dr. Dre), who in the mid-1980s was a member of the electro-rap group World Class Wreckin' Cru, which in 1987 put out the Los Angeles area's first rap recording under a major label. Griffin attended Jordan High School and played football.
In 1988, Griffin was jailed at age 17 for gun possession. While incarcerated, he took the nickname Warren G. By this time, Dr. Dre was already beginning to experience success as the writer and record producer for Ruthless Records, as well as being a member of N.W.A with Ruthless Records founder Eazy-E and Ice Cube. N.W.A's landmark album, Straight Outta Compton (1989), was driving the Los Angeles area's rap scene to swiftly drop electro for gangsta. After his release, Griffin worked at the Long Beach shipyards and began focusing on music after Dr. Dre taught him how to use a drum machine.
By 1990, Warren G had formed the trio 213 with two longtime running mates, Nate Dogg and Snoop Dogg. 213 was a contributor to the G-funk sound soon to emerge in rap. The trio dissolved after Warren G connected them to Dr. Dre. At that point, two solo careers were launched: Dr. Dre's and Snoop Dogg's, upon G-funk. Nate, too, signed to Dr. Dre's Death Row Records. Warren G initially helped there; not desiring a career in his mentor and stepbrother's shadow, however, he signed to Def Jam Recordings in New York City.
By 1990, as a record producer and rapper, Griffin formed a music trio with two of his longtime running mates, Nate Dogg and Snoop Dogg, in his hometown of Long Beach. In his 1994 single "Do You See", Warren G reminisces on his background, while incidentally noting, twice, that 213 had originally been Warren G, Nate Dogg, and Snoop Rock, amid visuals that briefly show the V.I.P record shop [Warren G, a singerlike rapper. The Long Beach trio, fond of Oakland rap group 415, named for the Bay area's area code, took the name 213, the Los Angeles area's. Practicing and recording in the modest studio in Long Beach record store V.I.P., they cut a demo tape. Dr. Dre, already a celebrity, rebuffed his younger stepbrother Griffin's requests for him to listen.
Before long, homemade copies of 213's songs spread in Los Angeles county, particularly the cities Compton and Pomona, and Los Angeles city's sections Watts and South Central, but no label picked them up. One day, Griffin phoned Dre to catch up, and found him at a bachelor party—thrown for Dre's friend Andre "LA Dre" Bolton, another record producer—whereupon Griffin found himself invited to join it. There, once the songs began to repeat, Griffin offered LA Dre the 213 tape. Liking it, he summoned Dr. Dre, who, hearing the Snoop rap "Super Duper Snooper", immediately welcomed the trio. Days later, 213 moved into Dre's lavish troubadour-style house in Calabasas, home to both his wife and his recording studio.
In April 1992, Dr. Dre's debut solo single "Deep Cover" introduced America to Snoop Doggy Dogg, the track's guest but instantly star rapper. Griffin helped Dre find sounds for Dre's debut solo album The Chronic, further debuting Snoop, whereby superstardom chased Snoop into 1993 and, via Snoop's own debut solo album, Doggystyle, captured him by 1994. By then, also solo, Nate, too, had joined Dre's label, Death Row Records. Griffin, returning to Long Beach, aimed to find his own way. In 2004, a 213 album finally arrived: The Hard Way.
During 1993, at Dr. Dre's studio, Griffin met John Singleton, director of Boyz n the Hood, the seminal film named for Eazy-E's debut single, produced by Dre. Singleton asked Griffin to produce a song for the soundtrack of his forthcoming film Poetic Justice. Griffin thus produced Mista Grimm's song "Indo Smoke", featuring Warren G and Nate Dogg. The single's success led to Griffin's invitation to Russell Simmons's label Def Jam Recordings, where Warren G signed a record deal. Also that year, Griffin and Nate, along with Kurupt—whom the 213 trio had brought to Dre to help on his album The Chronic—feature on "Ain't No Fun (If the Homies Can't Have None)", a huge underground hit, too risque to be a single, on Snoop's Doggystyle album, released in November.
On the Above The Rim soundtrack, from Death Row Records in April 1994, the single "Regulate" was a duet cowritten and performed by Warren G and Nate Dogg. Spending 20 weeks on the popular songs chart, the Billboard Hot 100, with 18 of them in the Top 40, including three weeks at No. 2 in May, it was the summer's top rap hit. Certified gold, half a million copies sold, since June, it attained platinum, a million copies, in August. In January 2017, via digital downloading, it was certified 2x multi-platinum. Back in the American summer of 1994, it stood at No. 1 on the MTV charts. Performing in Japan, he would discover fans who apparently understood no English, but knew all the lyrics. Into the 21st century, it remained Def Jam's biggest hit single. Russell Simmons, a Def Jam founder, explains, "Warren's music was worldwide because the melody plays no matter what the language."
Yet further, unlike other G-funk (short for gangsta funk) artists, Warren G, even called "a romantic" at heart, voiced simpler concerns. And his modest rap styling maximized, by heeding, his modest lyricism. "Regulate" doubled as the lead single Warren G's debut album, Regulate... G Funk Era, arriving in June 1994. Selling a million copies in three days, it debuted at No. 2 on the popular albums chart, the Billboard 200. In August, it was certified 2x multi-platinum, two million copies sold. Its second single, "This D.J.", went gold, half a million copies, in September, while peaking in July at No. 9. At the 1995 Grammy Awards, in March, both singles were nominated. And in January, the album's other single, "Do You See", had peaked at No. 42. In August, the album was certified 3x multi-platinum. That month also brought some Warren G collaborations on two albums from his Long Beach associates, Twinz only album Conversation (album) and The Dove Shack trio's This Is the Shack. And 1996 saw Warren G on the "Groupie" track of Snoop's second album, Tha Doggfather.