The rest of the country only recently caught on, but Los Angeles has long been riding for YG. Listen, and you'll hear him everywhere: That fat-bottomed bass line booming out of the '69 Chevy hittin' switches on Rosecrans belongs to his G-funked–up “Twist My Fingaz.” His sparse, Drake and Kamaiyah–featuring mantra “Why You Always Hatin'?” spins hourly on Power 106. Clubs still bang his gleefully raunchy 2008 wham-bam classic, “Toot It and Boot It.” He's even become ubiquitous at political rallies; his and Nipsey Hussle's menacing anthem “Fuck Donald Trump” has become the year's de facto protest song. He's so omnipresent that even people who've never set foot south of Staples Center refer to Compton as “Bompton,” in deference to the Blood slang he's helped popularize. But YG didn't capture the heart of the city just with great records. Like most natives, he's not “Hollywood.” He still kicks it in his 'hood. He dresses, in his words, like a cholo. He prefers a lowrider to a #raplife Rolls-Royce Phantom. In other words, he's one of us. To answer the question posed in one of his biggest singles: Who do we love? YG.

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