It’s Throwback Thursday, and we’re kicking it off with a little Warren G featuring Nate Dogg and “Regulate.” You’ll remember the song was initially released on the soundtrack to the film Above the Rim starring hip-hop great Tupac Shakur.

Back in the summer of 1994, this was the summer jam. If you think that a then 15-year-old girl (me) and a then 11-year-old girl (my sister) from Brookings, South Dakota couldn’t hang with the Crips in the LBC you are wrong my friend. We had this thing cranked in my parent’s conversion van faster than you could say “the Warren to the G.” Oh, and my parents were in the vehicle tolerating it. All we were missing were hydraulics.

To this day I would rate in this order (worst to best): my mom’s rapping skills to “Regulate,” followed by mine and then my sister’s. That 11-year-old had the cassette single so worn out that the cardboard edges of the box were starting to rip. Now that is thug love.

The popular belief was that Warren G was Snoop Dogg’s nephew but that’s not true. Snoop was a childhood friend of Warren. However, there are some familial ties in this circle. Snoop’s cousin is Nate Dogg (featured on “Regulate”). Dr. Dre is Warren G’s stepbrother. Snoop was discovered by Dre through his connection to Warren and if you can follow all of that then you must watch All My Children regularly. These four anchors of Death Row Records were tight. And in the early/mid-nineties they (and don’t forget 2Pac) rescued the world from the grips of Boyz II Men and solidified hip-hop as mainstream.

“Regulate” samples heavily from Michael McDonald’s Hit, “I Keep Forgettin’.” I actually free-styled “Regulate” over “Rapper’s Delight” one night in Minot but that is a story for never another time. Hear a DJ mash up of it in a Minneapolis club and the whole place is on its feet. The 1994 hit put funk on a whole new level. And Warren said it best; “the rhythm is the bass and the bass is the treble.”