Nate Dogg: The Heart of a Warrior

First of all let me start off by saying that I’m from Long Beach.  I use to get my hair pressed on Alamitos where the road veers to the left and turns into Orange.  The sista had a mustache.  She could press some hair. 

I sang in the youth choir at church.  I was painfully shy and not as experienced as some of the young girls who seemed so confident in themselves.  They were so taken aback by my shy demeanor as we sat in the pulpit on Wednesday evening choir practice that they insisted I must be sneaky.  “It’s the quiet ones you have to watch,” one of the older teenagers surmised.

The elders in my church sat in the front pews.  They were great singers.  One gentleman in particular was a giant, very tall, although he stooped from working all his life.  He would sometimes lead the choir from the front pews reaching down deep in his throat to throw out a spiritual as he testified to the goodness of God.  He had a son.  He was a gangster.  I knew him or I guess I should say I knew of him.  Like most of the teenage boys, he sat in the very last pew wearing some brown Dickies, tall, even sitting down.  Except it was more like leaning.  Suffering  from profound boredom, resistance was written all over his face.

But when he was at school, he smiled.  Sneaking around, macking to girls, kicking it with his homies, and getting in trouble, it was always such a shock to see him at church.  Most boys on the brink of manhood, would experience this divide, being offered a value system that didn’t seem to fit with the realities of the street.  The connection to the church was there, but it was like parent and child lived in two different worlds.

Nate Dogg’s voice would make me think of this poignant contradiction.  Also raised in the church, he represented the essence of manhood raised in the streets.  His voice evoked the church, and the gangster’s you knew in the neighborhood who ironically could be as sweet as peach cobbler to a sista, chilvary that took your breath away. 

It hurts to know that this voice of soulful masculinity has left the earth.  It’s a voice that makes you think of your daddy and the boy with the blue dickies and the tight jheri curl that you had a secret crush on. You’re torn because you know you shouldn’t date those kind of boys, but you’d probably never have to worry about trespassers if you ever snagged him. There’s at least two sides to a soldier at all times, a protector and a warrior. 

It seemed that his voice would be classified as a baritone, very deep, smooth, strong. A distinct departure from many of the voices you hear on the radio.  Listening to it made me feel somehow protected.  Like he’d be that kind of guy.  A don’t f*** with me or mines kind of bruh. 

And his soul.  I believed we must’ve liked all of the same kind of music.  Because every hook he sang seemed to come from a song I loved.  “Closer than Close.”  “I Keep Forgetting.”  He also seemed to sing for the soldiers in the street.  His vocal delivery of “Never Leave Me Alone,” actually put me in the holding cell with so many brothers on lockdown that had families on the outside.  I could see the inmate talking to his wife, reminding her to keep his picture with his son so he wouldn’t forget.  It’s some sad poetry that he really could bring to you through his voice. 

I recognized his reflective power of singing for so many of us.  Those raised in the church, that would sing songs connecting us way back to deep ancestral sorrow and pain.  Those of us who ever floated down the street in an old Cadillac with a Kenwood sound system  bumping “mind blowing decisions causes head on collisions.” 

I really appreciated him. Really appreciated the strength coming through his voice.  Really appreciated his use of language, the black syntax, the proverbial sayings many of us heard all of our lives, and that would serve as a foundation for some common sense lessons. 

I was raised by a soldier.  He wasn’t much on feelings, or so I thought.  Always preaching that I dumb down my emotions.  I know he was trying to make me strong.  Make me survive.  I would joke to myself that dad was never a little boy.  He must’ve came out a mean grown man.  My mom always insisted that my dad had feelings, but none of us believed her.

 But then Nate Dogg started singing.  Through his music I got a glimpse of the heart of a true warrior.