Warren G + Kidz in the Hall + U-N-I

Warren G

In the early ’90s, N.W.A.’s bleak gangsta war stories ushered in a new school of SoCal rappers. Among them was a group called 213, repping its Long Beach area code and featuring a skinny young rapper named Snoop Dogg, his cousin Nate Dogg and Dre’s younger stepbrother, Warren G.

We all know what happened next. Snoop teamed up with Dr. Dre for 1992’s game-changing The Chronic and grew into one of hip-hop’s biggest success stories, while Nate Dogg found himself the go-to crooner for thug-loving R&B, his silky baritone simmering over a smooth Michael McDonald vamp on Warren G’s “Regulate.” The tune quickly became a G-funk anthem, not to mention the highest chart showing we’d see from Warren Griffin III, despite a steady stream of output in the 15 years since.

G doesn’t stray too far from that time-honored formula on his latest, The G Files, with synth-saturated, bass-pounding rhythms trumpeting his return on tunes like “West Is Back.” While gangs and gats no longer dominate his rhymes, the disc’s token chronic shout-out, “Let’s Get High,” hazily recalls his breakout hit, 1993’s “Indo Smoke”—his smoothed-out steeze cementing his status as the genre’s elder spokesman.

Openers U-N-I hail from L.A. County’s Inglewood, and while it’s just a half hour drive northwest of Long Beach, the young duo of Y-O and Thurzday brings a relentlessly freewheeling mash-up sensibility, obsessed more with kicks than turf. Also supporting is the Ivy League–educated Kidz in the Hall, featuring Chi-town’s own Naledge spitting fire over producer Double-O’s club-thumpers—yet another angle in this cross-generational rap revue.

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