71

Regulate
Warren G (ft. Nate Dogg)
1994

Closing out our Week 3 picks with an absolute classic.  So, I walked you through a bit of the heartthrob that I was in middle school.  What I didn't tell you is that back in those days I was quite a fan of hip-hop/rap.  I think LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out" was the first cassette I ever purchased.  I remember loving Young MC's "Bust a Move," and Kris Kross' "Jump" (lol - guys, this is what rap was in 1990, ok?).  But I didn't just stop there.  Because I wanted to be cool like these guys, I once asked the family barber -- a brusque old ex-military guy named Larry with a tattoo of an anchor on his arm that automatically made him terrifying -- that I wanted a "line" on the side of my head.  That plan backfired, because ol' Larry didn't know what in the sam H he was doing (probably the first time he was ever confronted with this request, or maybe he knew exactly what he was doing and enjoyed every minute of this endeavor) and instead of like a 1'8" thin line in the side of my head I got like the 3'4" version.  What a disaster that was.

But I didn't just stop there, either.  No, sir, I decided what this ensemble needed was a gold chain, baby!  So, yeah, I had quite the yearbook photo by the time I got to Eighth Grade and it was just hard to peel the ladies off of me.  I just wanted to focus on my studies and take care of my egg baby from Home Economics class, you know?  

By the time I got to high school, I was pretty much finished with the rap scene and moved on to bigger and better things.  My friends, however, did not, and so I was exposed to a bunch of rap just as it was exploding in even more popularity -- Dre, 2Pac, Ice Cube, Wu Tang.  We had really intelligent arguments like who was better -- The Beatles, or something called Rodney O and Joe Cooley?  I pretty much rolled my eyes at all of it.

Except.  Except occasionally some songs slipped through the cracks and I appropriated them as one of my preferred tracks.  For instance, the all-time classic Regulate from Warren G FEATURING Nate Dogg.  Never heard from these cats before or since (apparently Nate Dogg is no longer with us??), but I love this song.  The beat, the pacing, the vocal/backing vocal.  And the lyrics!  Oh man, I still know these words today.

But one of the main reasons I love it is it instantly takes me right back to cruising around the South Bay of Los Angeles during my junior and senior years of high school.  We had the absolute worst cars -- I had a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu, my buddy Jon had like a 1978 Mercury Bobcat station wagon, my friend Rob who is like 6'5" had to unfold himself from his Ford Festiva which was like a damn Micro Machine.  And we would cruise the streets in those fine automobiles blasting Regulate.  I remember one particular night we cruised down Hawthorne Boulevard, all the way to The Forum in Inglewood, with Rob yelling out the window to large groups of confused bystanders, "Kurt Rambis is at Bare Elegance dancing with tassels on his nipples!!"  I'm almost embarrassed to have written that, but that was Rob, that was Torrance in 1994-95, and that was Regulate (and for all I know, that was Kurt Rambis). RIP Nate Dogg.

Other Songs Considered:
Don't push your luck