If gangsta rap was the prevailing subgenre of hip-hop from the late 1980s into the 1990s, “G-funk” (“G” as in “Gangsta”) was its even more uniquely West Coast offspring. The G-funk production style has been considered a sub-subgenre of hip-hop. Characterized most distinctly by the sampling of 1970s funk music—particularly that of combined group Parliament-Funkadelic—the sound of G-funk rap seemed to make its debut on Dr. Dre’s first solo album, The Chronic, released in 1992. After contributing his deft ear for production to his formative gangsta rap group N.W.A (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) and then forming his first record label, Death Row Records, with Marion (“Suge”) Knight, Dr. Dre’s invention of something as new and smooth as G-funk would have been just another triumph expected from him…Right?
Figures of the late 20th-century West Coast hip-hop scene reached near deification with their premature deaths or continued influence on music (think 2Pac, Eazy-E, or Dr. Dre), which has spurred greater attention to who deserves specific credit where credit is due for the era’s innovations. One consequence of this retrospection has been a shift in the narrative of G-funk’s inception. A biography of Dr. Dre, simply called Dr. Dre: The Biography, was published in 2007, and its author, Ronin Ro, was interviewed for an NPR program in a segment that became “Profiling the Father of G-Funk.” NPR host Tony Cox introduced the topic of Dr. Dre’s legacy by asserting that “in the early ’90s, the Los Angeles producer almost single-handedly crafted the new G-funk rap sound.” However, this is not a unanimously held belief; 10 years after this biography came out, an article in Complex took a deeper look at the person who has often been overlooked in the historical record of G-funk. This article’s title is in direct opposition to NPR’s: “Dr. Dre Perfected G-Funk, but He Didn’t Invent It—Gregory Hutchinson Did.” Shawn Setaro took it upon himself to reach out to Gregory (“Big Hutch”) Hutchinson, also known by the name of Cold 187um, to better understand his largely unheralded influence on G-funk. Hutchinson’s rap group Above the Law was a successor to N.W.A’s popularization of gangsta rap, but they were still doing something new: a musician raised on soul and funk, Hutchinson mixed Above the Law’s second album, Black Mafia Life, in 1991—a year before The Chronic was released—with samples from the catalogue of George Clinton-helmed Parliament-Funkadelic (“P-Funk”). He branded the sonic profile “G-funk.”
The murkiness around the credit for G-funk seems to boil down to messy album release timelines. Both Above the Law and Dr. Dre were signed to the same Ruthless Records label when Black Mafia Life was finished in 1991. As a result of varying delays, Above the Law’s album was not released until 1993. In that space of time, Dr. Dre was able to take the innovative sound created by Big Hutch that he first heard at Ruthless Records and build on it for his album The Chronic. Despite the frustration of not receiving widespread credit for his pioneering G-funk sound, Big Hutch remained gracious in the interview and maintained that Dr. Dre did not steal anything from him. Rather, he said, he makes do with the immense satisfaction of knowing he influenced one of hip-hop’s greatest producers.
Big Hutch’s sentiment about the merit of musical influence is perhaps the original thesis of rap. In the way that he and Dr. Dre looked to soul and funk, rappers have continued to borrow from other genres and artists long after the era of G-funk. Sampling is a way to generate something new while still resolutely being in conversation with musical and cultural antecedents. The development of more rigid copyright laws around hip-hop sampling has subjected the practice to much more scrutiny than in the 1990s. Increasingly, recognizable samples on rap songs have become a marker of an artist with existing capital to pay for the rights—essentially, someone untouchable like Kanye West. Still, music necessarily evolves. Rap prevails as a popular genre with growing subgenre offshoots, and talented producers and rappers can be counted on to keep crafting new sounds inspired by those before them. After all, continuing the lineage of hip-hop is a communal act of creation.