This Guy Died This Year: Nate Dogg, The King Of G-Funk
Nathaniel "Nate Dogg" Hale always sounded smooth. His voice gave
him a niche within G-funk's very stylized confines for the most
quintessential G-funk crooner of them all—not that there were
many, because who else did we really need?—and he held that
title for as long as it even existed.  He died this year, at age
41, of complications from multiple strokes. Many of the
obituaries and tributes after his death referred to him as a
"hook singer," and it's true that Nate Dogg sang great hooks. In
fact, Nate Dogg hooks are usually the best part of any song that
includes a Nate Dogg hook. Try to imagine Fabolous's "Can't Deny
It" or Ludacris's "Area Codes" without his presence. Luda's
"abominable ho-man" is a memorable line, but there's a reason
that neither of those tracks opened with the title artist's
voice.  "It ain't a hit," DJ Big Boy from Power 106 explained at
the singer's funeral in March, "until Nate Dogg spit."  Hip hop
has a long, sad tradition of