abstract:West Coast hip hop is a hip hop music subgenre that encompasses any artists or music that originates in the Western United States region of the United States, as opposed to East Coast hip hop, based originally in New York alone. The gangsta rap subgenre of West Coast hip hop began to dominate from a radio play and sales standpoint during the early 1990s with the birth of G-funk and the emergence of Suge Knight's Death Row Records.