Warren G Reveals Untold Stories of Death Row, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Tupac, and Regulate | Interview

go ahead and they let me do it with

death

row and um, but Def Jam was so smart, what they did was they let Interscope push everything to

regulate

it, it blew it up, the whole album had four million copies. Out of that one, that single, you know what I mean, and then what they did was, uh, they took the single again and they re-repaired it after it went out on them and they resurfaced it and they re-repaired it and they pushed it back as a new single for warranty. regular again so it would catch on fire again hey, my album is crazy when you thought, man, I'm an artist, yeah, yeah, yeah, well when I saw the, you know, like a royalty check that I didn't even know about nothing. like because there were a lot of people attacking me like we wanted to give you a publishing contract.

I was like what is that? So they were offering me like a lot of money, you know, it wasn't millions or anything. that's like three hundred thousand five hundred thousand back then that was a lot of money oh yeah um let me take that back yeah I didn't mean I didn't mean like that like I was filthy rich I did it I don't say it like that but uh but uh that that that uh that uh I forgot where I didn't look big didn't you tune out what we were talking about I don't know oh yeah yeah yeah thank you she's younger a lot of people a lot of people were offering me money so I said damn they were going to offer me that I could probably earn more so I said: did you know?

I'm not preparing. I said no, I'm fine. I don't want to do it just to see why they offered me all this money and I did it. Even I didn't understand the publication or anything. I wasn't thinking about it. I just wanted to make music, so when I saw the first check I thought, "this is what I can do doing the things I do." I'm doing it and I was like "wow" so I started. I was like, uh, I'm not doing anything, but did you know that's what made me realize that I'm really an artist, I'm really a producer?

I'm really here in the same industry, it's Dre and NWA and Run DMC, yeah you know all the artists that came before me. I'm finally in the same industry with these guys, so that's there. let me know that, um, you put one to work, you're official now and I came straight home and bought a Benz 600, there you go, look how we do it, look how we do it, do you own the house at that time? I had two hours, okay, there they are, hey, two houses, two apartments, I had a condo right there in Century City, I had a house in Lakewood, I had a house and an apartment in the valley, all that unnecessary, it was a lot of things that are part of your mother.

House bought his cars because of music and a dream, brother, yeah, that's part of your story when you say this is how you feel about being an artist, that song for me is the song that made me fall in love with hip hop, which regular regular how it makes you feel knowing that that song is such an important part of their lives and that it's a lot of people's first love yeah it's amazing to just know it or start watching it and people come to you saying that was your that It was the soundtrack to my life like uh, I mean, it's a journey, I mean, I'm not done yet, no, not yet, I'm still in it, you listen to that and you said, man, my homework, but those are some girls that The feeling is it never goes away, yeah man, when I get the feeling it always gives me this amazing feeling that makes me say, you know, what I'm getting ready to go crazy, it's in the movie where it started right after Tupac when he, you know, when at the end of uh Above the Rim and they showed Tupac and he did those looks and then the Boom boom boom no, it felt so good just that feeling of the era of that time just to have that.

Feeling uh and everyone feels the same was just amazing um and it's still like that when I do my shows and uh and when I'm on stage you know it's a habit for me to do that, that the chords chain together like I did in the video that we bring , we bring and when I'm doing that, everyone does this, yeah, amen, and you know what I love, man, is how when you do this DJ acapella at the end, oh yeah, and that's how you get off stage, yeah. actually and listen to the crowd give it back to you oh yeah and then that picture and then you go oh yeah just yeah actually yesterday Warren G really really really fake fake I'm just going to ask you a few questions if real real real is fake for fake magnify your mind right now created the phrase these crazy people right yeah man from real from real from real from real yeah so how was that?

Yeah man, how did these crazy people get together? uh, that's right It was something we were doing once again and once again we were working on The Chronic. I told Dre, I said, man, turn the mic on real quick, so he turned to Michael and I told him to start recording and I called my friend and um. I just called her just to have a conversation uh and at the end I was like hey what's your name? and she said who and I were like these crazy people and then she said, oh, shut up, you know, shut up. up and that was all the jumping that went off, uh, if I had some nuts on the wall, hey man, she knows that's her right, yeah, so that's her legacy too, yeah, man, he told me everything that in the video, everything in the show yeah, that was my own girl, hey man, were you planning on really, really, fake or fake, Warren G, were you planning on rescuing Tupac from, really, really , really, yes, explain that?

Well, I heard it needed to be developed. so I was in the bay um with Richie Rich and Richie Rich and the kind of super tight little top rail at that point and uh Rich and I were tearing up the city crushing our trucks Parking everything Going around I had a stinky Lincoln in these we were all destroying the city and he told me what was going on, so I met him, I told him, I said, man, please take that pocket and tell him I'll bail him out. I understand, I'll bail him out and he doesn't have to.

Pay me only if you give me a role. I'm fine, but I was going to give her the money to get it out, but she'll beat me to it. Damn, you know, but I swear to God for my mother. ready to send all that money to get it out, get it out and this is before you guys had a chance to work together, no, we had worked, yeah, it worked, yeah, we worked together, so it was, you know, and I had the money , you already know. and I didn't want him to be in jail, you know?

So when Richard Richard told you, I told him directly that he could have the letter that he wrote in the parking lot to let him know that he was trying to bail him out. I know and um, I think he was trying to get on a train or get someone to do it because he was going to bail him out. Yeah, I mean, I didn't want anything. If you had talked to anyone about it, no, I'm not. It was so cool, so it was like great minds thinking the same way, it wasn't like someone went to sugar and said, oh man, you know, Warren, thinking about bailing them out.

Maybe I've been talking too much or something, I don't know. But, I was going to send him the money and what was your relationship with Park like? We were cool, yeah, we were cool, uh, you just know he understood me back then, like the things that the summer because I was going through some. and uh he really understood me, that's when we were working together and we just bonded right then and there and he started, he went through some things while we were working and he picked up on what I was talking about. to the things he just went through and he created the definition of Thug and then created How Long Will They Mourn Me right after that session.

What was he like in the studio? Because you guys were working together when not everyone was emailing clues and you know you were there, I walked in, he was cool just sitting there, you know, one of the hats that little guy had yeah, like a hat and a little long thing and , uh, he was sitting there rolling, rolling. doing uh, cutting a joint, putting some blood in the joint and we started laughing and talking, you know, before you started working, did you work like people say that, man, you'd walk in there and you could sing a song quickly?

You see, I definitely witnessed it, yes, yes, but what really excited me is that some beautiful girls showed up there and I had glasses on my glasses all broken, they were showing me a lot of love. Yeah and uh. uh and I mean he was so cool and he asked me, he said Warren, he said to put something out and um, I just had a bunch of records and I started inserting them and playing them, so I put this one in. that was a uh uh it was I think it wasn't Donny Hathaway it was a bird uh I have dog uh Donald Byrd sample uh wind parade blew it up and boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom he said: "I want that one right there" and I was like, "Okay, cool, so we had a conversation earlier," and he picked up the pace and just said, "Okay, I'm fixing the right thing," so he walked into the booth and he was.

It took probably 30 minutes there and he came back out and said, "I'm done" and went back into the booth and recorded it, did some more and then came out again and then The engineer turned up the speakers because they had headphones and they didn't even you knew what was going on, yeah I'm just sitting there while he was doing that. I put on my headphones looking for more music to play for him, so he came out and they played. that came on and I was like, I just said some of the things I just told him, you know?

He was like Warren. I need you to put a hook on it or make a hook, oh, that's when I got out my turntable, my mix. and I was a hippie, tears, the season to serve, then I got the Richard Pryor, what are you doing? no one's putting me out of business, the same record I use on The Chronic um, I started crossing out no one's putting me out of business and that's how it ended and that's Legacy, yeah, it was great, we made that record. At Echo Sound we celebrate 50 years of hip-hop brother, oh yeah, and you're a piece of that puzzle, man, you know what I'm saying, not just Def Jam's imprint, where Def Jam was, when, when, when, I came to Def Jam, you know it and then you know it and keeping it real, it wasn't the heyday of Def Jam, it wasn't Public Enemy, it wasn't LL Cool J, it wasn't the Beastie Boys, it was like this guy. from Long Beach is on this East Coast label, you know what it feels like, but just what you've given to hip-hop, the things we know, the things we don't know, the things maybe you and I share , you know what I'm saying, but your contribution you know to this genre, it's crazy, no man, you know what I feel, you're not because I think, how could this guy not tell the world his true story?

You know what I'm saying, but I mean, but some of those things that we would be talking about, you know, I don't know, oh, yeah, some of the things you can't say anyway, yeah, I mean, come on now. , but Warren, it's always a pleasure to have you on the man on the block, it's all good, it's been lovely to watch your journey and like I said, man, I knew you before I got into radio, yeah you know that, and I saw you on a new deal, you know, with John Singleton, rest in peace, yes, Paul. Stewart and I remember that at one point, man, remember I used to make phones back then, I used people's phones, yeah, and I remember them saying, oh man, it was like yeah, you know, my guy hooked up phones and you and you They were like, man, man, no I don't even have my phone right now and I was like man, well let me know when you get it back, he was like man like man.

I gave it to a girl, a guy named Kirk took my phone, oh yeah, and I was like man. It's Kurt and I were like Warren, I don't have your phone, you know, but he gave it to someone saying, "Oh, they have this guy who can hook it up and from then on look at us now three foreigners."