G-funk

Infobox Music genre
name = Gangsta Funk
bgcolor = green
color = white
stylistic_origins = West Coast hip hop, P-Funk, Funk, R&B, Mobb music
cultural_origins = Greater Los Angeles area
instruments = Drum machine, Beatboxing, Vocals
derivatives =
subgenrelist =
subgenres =
fusiongenres =
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G-funk, or Gangsta Funk, is a type of hip hop music that emerged from West Coast gangsta rap in the early 1990s.

Unlike other earlier rap acts that also utilized funk samples (such as EPMD or The Bomb Squad), G-funk often utilized fewer, unaltered samples per song [cite book|last=Brown|first=Ethan|title=Queens Reigns Supreme: Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip Hop Hustler|date = 22|year = 2005|month = November|publisher = Anchor|id = ISBN 1-4000-9523-9|quote= [Unlike] popular hip-hop producers like the Bomb Squad, Dre instead utilized a single sample to drive a song.|chapter = Straight Outta Hollis] . Music theorist Adam Krims has described G-funk as "a style of generally West Coast rap whose musical tracks tend to deploy live instrumentation, heavy on bass and keyboards, with minimal (sometimes no) sampling and often highly conventional harmonic progressions and harmonies". [cite book |last=Krims |first=Adam |title=Rap Music and the Poetics of Meaning |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Gg8UiSodjz8C&pg=PA75&dq=%22g-funk%22&sig=ACfU3U0SGQ2bjz1RT8pnQ_Cu0oCVBkvpfQ#PPA74,M1 |accessdate=2008-08-02 |year=2000 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=0521634474 |pages=74]

Origins

There has been some debate over who should be considered the "father of G-funk." Graham Stewart is generally believed to have developed the sound [Stephen Thomas Erlewine, "Dr. Dre (Andre Young", in Vladimir Bogdanov et al., "All Music Guide to Rock", 3rd ed., Backbeat Books, p. 324. ISBN 087930653X. "Dre pioneered gangsta rap and his own variation of the sound, G-Funk .... [H] e reworked George Clinton's elastic funk into the self-styled G-Funk, a slow-rolling variation that relied more on sound than content."] ; the first hints of the whiny syn-leads and Parliament-Funkadelic-style bass grooves in Dre's work appeared on N.W.A.'s single "Alwayz Into Something" from their 1991 album "Efil4zaggin". Dr. Dre's first true G-funk single, however, was 1992's "Deep Cover", the title song from the movie soundtrack of the same name, which also introduced the world to Snoop Dogg.

References