For Warren G—the rapper and record producer who helped pioneer the laid-back, West Coast hip-hop style of the 1990s—stages of life are not only marked by the music he created, but also the food he was eating at the time. In the early days, while he, Snoop Dogg, and his brother, Dr. Dre, were recording The Chronic at Death Row Studios, it was Popeyes that fueled the tracks, with the trio sneaking off between sessions for fried chicken on Hollywood Boulevard. Today, as a family man, it's barbecue and tailgate parties, with Warren firing up the grill in high school parking lots before his son's football games.

But back before all that—before his single with Nate Dogg, "Regulators," would be nominated for a Grammy; before his former boss, Suge Knight, would ignite an East Coast-West Coast war at the 1995 Source Awards—Warren met Snoop at a corner store on 20th Street and Orange Avenue in Long Beach during elementary school. Growing up, the pair would get by on government-assisted lunch plans, traveling to Cal State to play in sports programs for underprivileged youth.

While much has changed for Warren over the years—jumping from Death Row to fatherhood, from rapping to cooking and back again—food and music have always been about family first and foremost. Long Beach, where ComplexCon will take place this year on November 5 and 6, has always been home. 

“Understand this: we was all family,” Warren says, his voice still low and placid. “As far as Dre, I know people say ‘step brothers,’ but we're brothers. We've been together all our lives. We were raised together, we slept in the same room, slept in the same bed, so that's how that works.”

“I've been around him since I was a puppy, all my life, and I'm 45 now,” he adds. “I don't know what that is if it ain't brothers.”

Though Warren’s partying days are largely behind him, today the rapper hopes to open his own barbecue and soul food joint, Sniffin’ Griffin’s, in the area. The Wild West of the ‘90s has been forever immortalized in the music videos of Dre and Snoop, but today, Warren takes a look at the past, present, and future of nightlife in Long Beach. From Japanese cuisine and late-night fast-food, to house parties and strip clubs, here is Warren G’s after-hours guide to the LBC.

Photo: Katana/Facebook

Well man, to start off, I like to blaze before I go eat. Katana (8439 Sunset Boulevard, 323-650-8585) is one of my favorites restaurants on Sunset Boulevard. So I get my blaze on a little bit and once I get there I have some drinks, and then I order up some appetizers. They have incredible Cajun chicken wings and they butterfly them and put them on the skewer. Oh my God. And then they've got some ribeye skewers that are just incredible too.

So I start off with the appetizers and then I dig in. I get in there with my main course. They got this one dish where it's this whole fish and they fry it. And the shrimp fried rice is incredible. The sashimi is incredible—yellow tail with the diced onions in it and the sauce. There's just so much that they offer. Everything I've tried was always good.

We used to meet at Katana. Me, Dre, and a few of his buddy's, we would all be up at Katana outside or over in the corner just chillin', having a good time, having some drinks and stuff like that. But that's been a while. Everybody's busy. I'm on the road a lot. Dre is on his business tip, and he's been traveling and stuff like that. But whenever we get a chance to chill, we chill.

We used to [have parties] at Dre's house. Me and Snoop lived with Dre, so we would have barbecues like every weekend and just party and have a good time, swim in the swimming pool, and make music. That was from ‘90 to about ‘93. Just having a good time, that’s what it's all about. It's still like that. It's still all about having a good time, barbecuing. Music is built on emotions and feelings. You feel good, you make good music. You're feeling a certain way and that's the way it comes out.

I wasn’t the man behind the grill back then. I was just hanging out and there were other cats that were Dre's friends that would barbecue. [We’d make] everything. Ribs, burgers, hot dogs, links, tri tip, everything. Pork chops. Turkey steaks. Everything. That's just a natural thing here in LA.

Photo: Jessica Rossi/Flickr

There's a Bob's Big Boy—it's probably one of the only ones left—in Long Beach. There's a spot called Nico's. It’s a hood spot, I don’t know if anybody would really want to go in there too much. But there's a spot called Nico's, and everybody, after they've partied at Nico's, they all go to the Bob's. The Bob's Big Boy people now they're coming, so what they do is they come in and they bring in one of those little speakers and they let them just start dancing in the restaurant. Just a regular Bob's Big Boy from back in the day.

Photo: Warren G/Instagram

There's a lot of barbecue spots. We've got some good barbecue. There's this place in Long Beach called Ken's (782 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, 562-599-7685)​​. It's a mixture of soul food and barbecue. It's [owned] by one of my childhood friends. He's got a barbecue spot on Martin Luther King and Pacific Coast Highway. And then I've got another buddy, Jason Hunter, he's got a barbecue joint called the Swamp (5204 Orange Ave​nue, 562-326-9629​) and that's up in north Long Beach, 52nd Street and Orange. You have ‘em everywhere, all over the place.

I'm hopefully gonna start a Sniffin Griffin's BBQ and Soul Food pretty soon. I'm just learning about the restaurant business, trying to see what it takes. But for now I'm ordering a pit on the trailer already.

The strip clubs was cool, too. Everybody would go to the strip club and drink and have a good time and tip the ladies for what they're doing. It was cool. It's a cool thing. They've got Starz. Starz is probably the most popular out here right now. You've got a bunch of gentlemen's clubs, but Starz (2528 W. Rosecrans Ave​nue, 310-327-9500​) is where everybody's gonna go. If somebody comes from out of town, they're gonna go there. Starz is like the Magic City of Los Angeles.