[youtube id=”IRwTb2kXkYU”]Nate Dogg had already created his own lane as the king of the hip-hop hook when he recorded the self-penned “One More Day.” His breakthrough performance two years earlier on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic announced his rich, booming voice as the addition needed to make a song whole. The Murder Was The Case soundtrack was his first time being featured as a lead singer. Daz Dillinger produced “One More Day” under his former moniker Dat Nigga Daz and Nate Dogg sang about growing up with violence and the gift of survival. Murder Was The Case was a short film from Snoop Dogg named after the single from his Doggystyle debut album. Nate Dogg was able to transport listeners into his tale about a tough childhood with the smoothness of a modern-day R&B griot. It would be four more years in 1998 when he saw the release of his first solo album. 

Throughout the ’90s and early 2000s, Nate Dogg’s voice would complete songs with Eminem, Fabolous, Mariah Carey, Ludacris, Warren G, Snoop Dogg, Eve and many other artists. He had three solo albums and scored a high-profile appearance in the movie Head Of State of which he also wrote and performed the theme song. Nate Dogg passed in 2011 after suffering multiple strokes. His death left a hole in hip-hop where his voice was the body and soul of the G-Funk era and added raw gospel and R&B influences to national rap and pop.  

[iframe id=”http://player.theplatform.com/p/L9TCEC/J0IPZlt_pU0y/embed/feed/31727/select/UUvGzAgQZhwx”] Nate Dogg is the subject of the latest episode of Unsung and it is an overview of his days as the pioneering vocalist of G-Funk R&B. Unsung follows Nate Dogg from his beginnings as a child in Mississippi singing with his family in church,  to his California relocation and  his fated meeting with Snoop Dogg. They met in high school and it was the start of their lifetime friendship and professional relationship.  His passing in 2011 makes the Unsung episode even more important because he was never truly recognized for his contributions to the West Coast and his powerful hooks that added another dimension of soul to any song he sang. An artist like The Weeknd owes much to Nate Dogg for using the sensuousness and smoothness of R&B to make rugged pimp lyrics palatable.  Watch the whole episode above.

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Mista Grimm is a California rapper who had a deal on the Epic Records subsidiary 550. “Indo Smoke” is from the 1993 “Poetic Justice” soundtrack and it was Grimm’s first release. Nate Dogg and Warren G had guest appearances on the track that described the glories of green smoke. The rapper made a contribution to the “Higher Learning” soundtrack in ’94 with the song “Situation: Grimm.” Grimm’s debut album, Things Are Looking Grimm got shelved after an aborted ’95 release date. He last appeared on DJ Pooh’s ’97 album Bad Newz Travels Fast and Warren G’s The Return Of The Regulator in 2001.