The Best West Coast Hip-Hop Albums of the '90s

Death Row's opening statement, and the record that made Snoop Doggy Dogg famous months before he had an album of his own. Nuthin' But A "G" Thang lifts its bassline from Leon Haywood's I Want'a Do Something Freaky to You, drops the tempo to a crawl and lets a thin synth whine sit on top of it. Spotify carries the uncensored sixteen-track original.

Twenty-seven tracks over two discs, cut at speed after Death Row posted the bond that got him out of prison in October 1995. Ambitionz Az A Ridah opens on Daz Dillinger's low dragging keyboard figure with no real hook attached, which is exactly the intent. Worth knowing before you press play: the California Love here is the remix, not the single.

Dr. Dre produced every track, and Lodi Dodi is a near-verbatim retelling of Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh's La Di Da Di with barely a line altered. Gin and Juice rolls on a lazy George McCrae lift while Snoop half-sings the hook a beat behind. Spotify credits it to Snoop Dogg and drops both the W Balls interlude and Gz Up, Hoes Down, leaving thirteen tracks.

Split down the middle into a Death Side and a Life Side, sequenced as an argument rather than a running order. It ends with No Vaseline, four and a half minutes of scorched earth aimed at his old group and their manager, delivered flat and unhurried over a loop that never once lets up. Nothing since has matched it for spite.

J-Swift produced almost all of it for Delicious Vinyl, and the four of them met as dancers, which is why the record moves like nothing else out of Los Angeles that year. Passin' Me By floats a Quincy Jones sample from Summer in the City under four verses about being overlooked, and Fatlip's is the one that lands hardest.

Four Oakland teenagers, all of them Hieroglyphics, handed Jive something the label plainly had not asked for. 93 'til Infinity runs on a Billy Cobham loop and a bassline that keeps stepping out of its own way, four verses interlocking like they were written in one room. Note the rendering: the album is lower-case, the track is capitalised as 93 'Til Infinity.

Cut in New York with the Bomb Squad after he walked out on N.W.A in a dispute over money, which is why it sounds nothing like the West Coast records it set off. The Nigga Ya Love To Hate stacks sirens, horn stabs and a crowd chanting against him. Border case on region: an Angeleno rapper, a Long Island production team.

Number one on the Billboard 200 while its author sat in Clinton Correctional Facility, which no artist had managed before. Dear Mama sets a Spinners loop from Sadie against a verse that concedes more than any interview he ever gave, with Tony Pizarro's production deliberately staying out of the way. The best-written record he made, and the least armoured.

Built on an Akai MPC60 out of records dug from a basement in Sacramento, and put out by the London label Mo' Wax rather than by anyone in California. Midnight In A Perfect World stacks a drum break, a piano figure and a wordless vocal into something that declines to resolve. Border case twice over: instrumental, and Bay Area by address more than by scene.

DJ Muggs produced the whole thing for Ruffhouse and Columbia, pushing B-Real's voice up into that nasal register on purpose. How I Could Just Kill a Man moves on a fat dragging bass figure with a horn stab that arrives late every single time. Region note: B-Real and Sen Dog are South Gate, Muggs came from Queens, so the Latino LA claim is the group's own.

Profile Records signed him out of Compton and let him produce the entire album himself, arrangement and mix included, which almost nobody was handed in 1991. Tonite is the one that stuck: drums that sound played rather than looped, a bassline walking underneath, and a party narrative that keeps going wrong. Still the finest pure musician the region turned out.

Never a Death Row record, whatever the sound suggests: it came out on Violator and Rush Associated Labels through Def Jam, though Warren G and Dr. Dre are stepbrothers who grew up in one house. Regulate loops Michael McDonald's I Keep Forgettin' and gives the hook to Nate Dogg. Spotify's untagged twin is the clean one; the twelve-track explicit original carries an Explicit Version suffix.

Aftermath and Interscope issued it in November 1999, and it was meant to be called The Chronic 2001 until Death Row objected to the title. Still D.R.E. was written by Jay-Z, and its two-note piano figure is the most economical thing Dre ever built. Spotify's edition runs twenty-three tracks and finishes on a plain Outro.

Sick Wid It and Jive put it out, and Dusted 'N' Disgusted gathered 2Pac, Mac Mall and Spice 1 onto one track a year before the coastal feud consumed everything. Sprinkle Me hands the hook to his sister Suga-T over a bassline that slides through the gaps where the beat wants a full stop. The Bay's case for the decade rests here.

Tommy Boy released it in March 1990, and Shock G's Humpty Hump alter ego — fake nose, separate credit — was funny enough to hide how much Parliament theory holds the thing up. The Humpty Dance rides a Parliament lift and a drum break that trips over itself on purpose. Oakland's funk lineage starts here, and 2Pac joined the crew a year later.