G-Funk

The documentary tells the story of the G-funk sound born in California at the start of the nineties. At its centre are three childhood friends from East Long Beach: Warren G, Snoop Dogg and Nate Dogg. The three took the hard mould of gangsta rap and put seventies funk, Motown and R&B inside it; what came out was slow, melodic and playable on the radio. That sound carried hip hop somewhere else commercially; the genre reached the top of the mainstream charts for the first time. Karam Gill's film puts Warren G at the centre of the telling, because he is the least discussed of the three. Ice Cube, Ice-T, George Clinton and Snoop Dogg speak. The account builds where the sound came from well, but moves faster over the violence of the period and the reckoning with the industry.