10 Songs You Know From The First SECOND
5. California Love - 2Pac
It was virtually impossible to escape the explosion of rap at the start of the '90s. Whether it was the G-funk coming off of Dr. Dre's The Chronic or the blunt force of Nas on Illmatic, the road stripes the genre earned the '80s paved the way for some of the hardest bars coming from both sides of the US. Biggie Smalls may have been holding it down on the East Side, but the city of Compton gave us another crowned jewel with California Love.
A lot of the gangsta rap around this time was much more concerned with the individual bars than the actual hook line, but 2Pac's ode to the Sunshine State got your attention from the minute those vocoded vocals come in. While the idea of artificial sounding vocals was nothing new at this point, this little hook line by Roger Troutman sets the perfect tone for the murderous verses you're about to hear.
Though the tone of his voice is pretty laid back, there is an underlying sense of dread in every other word, almost as if you can hear all the painful history of Compton in between the notes. 2Pac has gone down as one of the greatest poets behind a mic, but this little extension put everything in context before he even delivered a single line.