Songfacts®:

• "Nuthin' But A G Thang" is a gangsta rap classic dealing with the lifestyle of music, money and violence (the "G" stands for "Gangsta"). These were all topics Dr. Dre covered in his band N.W.A, but this track has a very different feel. Smooth and laid-back, it channels the '70s with a funky sample of Leon Haywood's 1975 hit, "I Want'a Do Something Freaky to You."
• This is the song that brought G-funk to the masses. It was played in dance clubs, on R&B radio, and even on some of the more adventurous Pop stations. N.W.A had a substantial hit with "Straight Outta Compton" in 1988, but "G Thang" was much bigger, climbing to #2 on the Hot 100, held off the top spot by the Canadian reggae rapper Snow's "Informer." (At the time, Snow was serving jail time in Toronto for assault.)
• Dr. Dre's protégé Snoop Doggy Dogg features on this track. Dre introduced him on the 1992 cut "Deep Cover," but for most of us, "Nuthin' But A G Thang" was the first time we heard Snoop, who changed the game by coming hard with a mellow flow that contrasted well with Dre's gruff delivery. Snoop, who raps on several Chronic tracks, soon became a superstar but had to beat a murder rap along the way. He was arrested in August 1993 after his bodyguard shot and killed a rival in a Los Angeles park, and didn't get his innocent verdict until 1996.
• This was the lead single from Dr. Dre's debut album, The Chronic, released in December 1992 on Death Row Records, the label Dre set up with Suge Knight. The song made a slow climb up the charts, reaching its #2 peak in March 1993 as it pushed into the suburbs. It was a breakthrough not just for West Coast G-funk, but for rap in general, which to this point needed to be novel and upbeat to cross over (think MC Hammer). Dre's N.W.A bandmate Ice Cube followed in its path, reaching #15 with "It Was a Good Day" in April, then becoming a movie star.
  
  The second single from The Chronic was "Dre Day," a blistering attack on another N.W.A member, Eazy-E. That one reached #8 in July, followed by "Let Me Ride" at #34 in October. In November, as the album neared the end of its shelf life, Death Row issued Snoop Dogg's debut album, Doggystyle. Produced by Dr. Dre, debuted at #1 and outsold The Chronic. Dre didn't release another solo album until 1999, keeping his focus instead on producing other artists.
• Dr. Dre shouts out the rapper D.O.C. in the line: "Like my homie D.O.C., no one can do it better." "No One Can Do It Better" is the name of The D.O.C.'s 1989 album, which Dre produced.
• Dre directed the music video for this song, which follows the rapper and his pal Snoop Dogg during their hijinks at a block party in Long Beach, California.
• Snoop Dogg references the 1975 movie Dolemite in the line:
  
  Pimpin' hoes and clockin' a grip like my name was Dolemite
  
  Dolemite is a character created by Rudy Ray Moore, who played him in the film. In 2019, Snoop appeared in a Netflix movie about Moore called Dolemite Is My Name, playing a disc jockey who won't play Moore's records.
• Kriss Kross - the guys who made us "jump, jump" - sampled this on their 1993 single "I'm Real." Rapper Ja Rule also sampled it on his 2001 single "Livin' It Up."
• This was used in the 2003 action movie Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu. It was also featured in the 2006 romantic comedy Failure to Launch, starring Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker.
• Snoop references Death Row Records in the lyrics ("Death Row is the label that pays me"), Dre's new label founded by his friend and former bodyguard, Suge Knight. Knight allegedly secured Dre's release from Eazy-E's Ruthless Records by holding co-founder Jerry Heller hostage in the back of a van and, to really drive the point home, threatening Eazy's mother. Dre would eventually start his own label, Aftermath Records, in 1996, which would sign the likes of Eminem, 50 Cent, and Kendrick Lamar.
• This topped both the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and the Hot Rap Songs chart.
• Another bit of '70s flavor comes from the vibraslap that rattles at the start of the song. The percussion instrument was still new in the '70s and featured in many rock songs, one of the earliest being Jimi Hendrix's 1968 cover of "All Along The Watchtower."