In the ensuing years, he became both a mogul, distributing records by his local peers, and one of the first Bay Area rappers to earn a major label deal.

It wasn’t necessarily an answer to the sounds coming from New York-it was just self-made artists like E-40, who recorded with his family members in the venerated group The Click, doing their own thing. Born Earl Stevens in 1967, he grew up in Vallejo, CA and helped define the late-’80s Bay Area underground alongside Too Short, giving the West Coast its first true hip-hop scene.

Few, if any, rappers have made the music seem so alive and kept progressing the art form for as long as E-40 has.