Nate Dogg

Few artists can claim their guest features and cameos constitute a canon all their own. Nate Dogg is the towering, swaggering exception to this rule. While his three celebrated solo albums shade in the finer details of the Long Beach native’s life, his legendary run of choruses and codas made his voice one of the most instantly recognizable in the history of hip-hop and R&B. Born Nathaniel Hale in 1969 and raised singing in church, he dropped out of high school at 17 and spent three years stationed in Japan with the Marines. When he returned home he formed a trio, 213, with Snoop Dogg and his high school classmate Warren G; before long he was laying inimitable hooks—gruff in disposition but velvety in tone—on albums like Dr. Dre’s The Chronic and Snoop’s Doggystyle. Inextricable from the West Coast, he also laced hits for rappers from Atlanta (Ludacris’ “Area Codes”), Detroit (Eminem’s “Till I Collapse”), New York (50 Cent’s “21 Questions”), and every point in between.