How else were we gonna end? RIP Nate.
[Video]
[9.73]
Kat Stevens: I was very excited to return from my semi-regular Saturday trip to the Uxbridge branch of Our Price with a cassingle of “Regulate” in my sweaty paws. Until that morning I’d thought of the tune as a harmless whistling pop tune with a good bassline and some dudes chatting about going for a drive. It was down as a ‘maybe’ on my mental shopping list for Our Price, along with “Absolutely Fabulous” by the Pet Shop Boys and “Searching” by China Black (Prodigy’s “No Good” and “Swamp Thing” by The Grid were definites). I bought them all eventually (once my pocket money replenished itself) but that day I bumped up “Regulate” to top priority when I saw it on the shelf with a black and white sticker on the bottom — tiny, but no less thrilling. I had no idea this song was at all naughty! I had a new-found respect for Capital FM for daring to play something so illicit. As soon as I got home I shoved it into the tape deck and listened to it carefully all afternoon to see if I could hear some swearwords. Alas the only vaguely rude thing I could pick up was about going to a motel with some girls they’d just met. My disappointment at Warren and Nate’s failure to say ‘shit’ was significant, but thankfully it turned out that saying “chordz…stringz…we bringz…” was just as good. I kept the cassingle case hidden underneath Stiltskin’s “Inside” in case Mum ever opened my tape drawer and saw the sticker.
[9]
Edward Okulicz: One of the most generous records of all time; Warren G gets mugged, Nate Dogg saves him, but it’s you, the listener, who gets to feel like a total bad-ass when it plays. More than rapping, this is a convincing enough narrative and performance to feel like acting. Warren G never suited another role like this one, that’s for sure.
[10]
Zach Lyon: Just astonishing how utterly ludicrous this story is when you play it out in your head (Nate apparently kills a dozen-or-so armed men just by open-firing at them I guess) but how convincing it remains. I listened to it for the first time last week (take away my music card or whatever) after learning about the death of a guy whose name meant very little to me at the time. Yeah, it’s pretty good.
[10]
Alfred Soto: Nate’s breakout single happens to be his best, and it’s impossible to separate my memories of how it seized control of my imagination in a summer dominated by Lisa Loeb, Soundgarden, All 4 One, and Erasure’s “Always.” Seventeen years later, I still haven’t parsed the lyrics. Pure sensation — fake outrage, Nate so euphoric he chokes on polysyllables, minds switched to freak mode thanks to a Michael McDonald keyboard sample. I would argue that “Regulate” represents so complete a distillation of the West Coast sound that I need never listen to period Dre, but that’s no way to persuade naysayers from removing their feet from my neck.
[10]
Jonathan Bogart: One of the iconic singles of the g-funk era. Although much of the supposedly classic music of the 90s has faded into a sort of dismal phoniness, the menacing stillness underlying Nate Dogg’s deceptively smooth vocals as he rides that chirping, night-crawling beat remains fresh. Warren G is almost as good, switching up his flow so that the two interlock. It’s the rare great pop song without a chorus, but when you have “next stop is the East Side Motellllll,” who needs a chorus?
[10]
Ian Mathers: I’m sure that we’ll get some contrarions (and that nostalgia is affecting me, and probably most of us), but at an age where my conception of rap was Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer (you can imagine the contempt), “Regulate” was the first song I heard to make me think I could love the stuff. Warren G has always seemed a bit ineffectual to me, so of course he gets into a scrape that Nate has to rescue him from, via lots of violence, followed by picking up some women and then some casual sex. That cheesy Young Guns dialog, the Michael McDonald sample, “the rhythm is the bass and the bass is the treblllle,” Nate’s touching ode to violent brotherhood, Warren’s surprisingly effective distress, the video… everything is about as close to perfect as it can be.
[10]
Martin Skidmore: By the nature of a site reviewing new singles, we don’t often get to review solid-gold classics that we’ve loved for ages, so this is a rare delight. From the tense opening beats, this is a masterpiece. Warren G is expressively nervous and distressed as he gets mugged, then Nate rides to the rescue. I usually find macho stuff offputting, but I’m a sucker for a rescue in a doomed situation, and Nate’s sweet, controlled tones as he is killing people is a beautiful contrast. There’s nothing about this I don’t adore, and I’m not sure there are any hip hop tracks I’ve listened to more often – much the easiest ten I’ve ever given.
[10]
Jonathan Bradley: Uncomplicatedly classic, with an ambience chilled like the dropping mercury at twilight, a groove that glides like a gas guzzler on an L.A. freeway, and just a hint of approaching danger, like getting caught alone in a bad neighborhood. Whether speaking to the narrative or the arrangement, few duos achieve this level of coordiantion; Nate Dogg and the Warren-to-the-G go together like rhythm-as-bass and bass-as-treble. The machine is so efficient it dispenses with the narrative after two verses, leaving the last to act as a genre thesis. PhDs have been awarded for less.
[10]
Anthony Easton: The narrative here is amazing, the story telling, and the regulating voice to tell that story. I cannot say anything more really, cannot explain with an intellectual rigour why this is as genius as I think it is.
[9]
Al Shipley: That part where Nate sings a couple bars of “Let Me Ride” and in the video looks off in the distance with this suddenly disarming earnest, wistful expression? That always gets me, man.
[10]
Mark Sinker: What happens when ugliness is not just pretty, but lovely? Obviously we often resolve the conundrum simply by declaring one side the winner — and cheering or booing accordingly. The music sweetens the crime, and to some that’s just bad. For others, the pleasure is redemptive: he’s obviously pretty much a villain, but oh! That voice! For many, the crime simply ruins the music: such people are protected by intensity of revulsion from confronting any contradiction. But the questions the contradiction asks are worth not dodging, even if your real feelings or tastes are encouraging you to slip away safely. What do we do when ugliness is — not seems, is — gorgeous? What does it mean? How is the world changed if the balance is exact, equal and opposite, not just in this song, but other situations too? Lots of other situations? I wouldn’t want to live there — and actually I doubt Warren G does and Nate Dogg did, much of the time, but some people do — and it’s worth discovering there are zones of the world that you wouldn’t find remotely decideable, and maybe a little of what that feels like. “For beauty is but the beginning of a terror we are just barely able to bear, and it stuns us as it serenely disdains to destroy us.” And no one believes they’re angels, obviously.
[9]