Non-Hip-Hop Influences on West Coast Rap
These five trailblazers blended funk, soul, and electro to create the sounds that future West Coast rappers—from Dre to Kendrick—would transform into hip-hop history.
Hip-hop is the ultimate postmodern art form, bearing the fingerprints of funk, jazz, blues, soul, and anything that its crate-digging producers can think to sample. But in terms of sketching the blueprint of California rap, the following five artists and acts are its supreme architects.
This roundup appears in Issue 34 of Alta Journal. SUBSCRIBE
George Clinton
The Parliament-Funkadelic frontman was the fluorescent photosynthesis to the bloom of West Coast hip-hop. The foundational electro-rap DJ crew Uncle Jamm’s Army swiped their name straight from the Godfather of Funk. When Dr. Dre unleashed G-funk on the world, he alchemized the ingredients in the same cauldron as George Clinton’s cosmic slop. On the classic “Can’t C Me,” 2Pac knew to turn to the “bop gun”–wielding visionary who had pried open the third eye of the previous generation. Likewise, Kendrick Lamar enlisted Clinton to sprinkle raspy prophecies on 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, ensuring uninterrupted transmission of the Afro-futuristic funk-rap lineage.
Roger Troutman
Before hip-hop, there was “More Bounce to the Ounce,” the blistering and hydraulic lead single from Roger Troutman’s funk band, Zapp, that did everything but put gasoline in ’64 Chevys. Prior to his 1999 murder, the talk-box titan warbled on 2Pac’s “California Love,” Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle, and Eazy-E’s final album. This was the quintessential car wash cassette deck funk integral to the alleles and chromosomes of West Coast rap. In the process of creating it, Troutman also crafted the robotic template for the auto-tuned takeover of the 21st century.
PRINCE
Clinton is the father of West Coast hip-hop. Troutman is the son. But Prince is the holy spirit, the elfin virtuoso sampled by everyone from 2Pac to DJ Quik. If his presence was felt more prominently in the early years of L.A. rap, via Jheri-curled apostles of his like the Egyptian Lover and Arabian Prince, the specter of his creativity still looms large. After all, on last year’s “Like That,” Lamar equated himself with the Purple One, reminding Drake that “Prince outlived Mike Jack.”
Rick James
The Chappelle’s Show caricature overshadows the seismic impact of the Buffalo, New York–bred funkster, who adopted Los Angeles as his second home around the time that 75 percent of United States banknotes were estimated to contain traces of cocaine. You can certainly link the weed rap of Cypress Hill to Rick James’s “Mary Jane.” Up in the Bay Area, flamboyantly sleazy pimp rappers like Too Short took their cues from the original Slick Rick. But most crucially, the lubricious riff of James’s “Super Freak” supplied the backbone of the first multiplatinum West Coast crossover smash, MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.”
Dazz Band
The gritty freeway funk conjured by Motown West’s standard-bearers dominated L.A. urban radio well into the new millennium. But even more important was the tutelage of the group’s producer Reggie Andrews, the cowriter of “Let It Whip,” whose teaching career at Locke High School provided a vital music education to the next generation of L.A. music luminaries, including Terrace Martin, Thundercat, and Kamasi Washington—the jazz players and producers fundamental to the wild style of Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly.
Jeff Weiss is the founder of the music blog and online magazine Passion of the Weiss and author of the book Waiting for Britney Spears.
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