As an imaginative abbreviation of the phrase “gangster funk,” and a sound inspired by the Ohio Players’ “Funky Worm” synthesizer melody as well as Zapp’s car stereo wrecker “More Bounce to the Ounce,” G-funk dominated West Coast hip-hop for the better part of a decade, and even longer if you add post-G-funk homage like YG’s “BPT.” So why limit this best-of roundup to a mere 30 tracks? Music journalists Max Bell and Torii MacAdams don’t really explain why, though they acknowledge the “glaring omissions” that result from such a truncated list. Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Warren G, and DJ Quik get two selections each (the number-one pick, Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg’s “Nuthin’ But a G Thang,” is an Apple Music exclusive, hence its absence from the Spotify playlist). But there’s nothing from Mack 10, Soopafly, 2Pac’s infamous alter ego Makaveli, Daz Dillinger’s highly underrated Revenge, Retaliation and Get Back, or Cube’s supergroup Westside Connection. Wait, no “Bow Down?” These must be East Coast writers.
