Royce Da 5'9" was not a singer of the Nate Dogg caliber

It pains me to return to the now totally passé subject of Nate Dogg, but in all the tributes I read I didn't come across any specific Before & After posts to demonstrate the transformative qualities a Nathaniel appearance could have on a song, which is a pity when we have a real humdinger of an example with the original version of Xxplosive AKA The Way I Be Pimpin' AKA one of the Royce Da 5'9"-featuring songs from Dr Dre's 2001 that ended up scrapped after he was disgorged from the Aftermath camp for casually blowing up the spot about ghostwriting for Dre in a magazine interview back in 1999 :

Dr Dre ft. Royce Da 5'9" - The Way I Be Pimpin' (1999)



Xxplosive is a song it seems like the sun was created solely to be able to shed light upon as it thumps from a car stereo on a summer afternoon; The Way I Be pimpin', ummmm, not so much. It isn't that it's a turkey, per se, but, with the exception of The Next Episode, 2001 was all about the album-cuts rather than the singles, so The Way I Be Pimpin' is less of an Xxplosive or a Fuck You, and more of a Big Ego's or a The Message. Admittedly, it does contain a few nice lines, but you'd have to be the spawn of a plebeian to possibly prefer Dre's uncomfortable autocue delivery of Royce's lyrics and Royce himself awkwardly intoning a chorus which is flatter than Nas's pockets after Kelis fleeced him in their divorce settlement over the song it eventually became on 2011 where Nate slides in for an extended crooning session in the vein of Ain't No Fun and Kurupt and Six-Two take a scenic stroll down misogyny lane either side of him.

Imagine if Royce hadn't incurred the wrath of Dre after opening up his big gob about what was rap's mostly poorly kept secret and The Way I Be Pimpin' did appear on 2001, we could now be living in a Bizarro world where Royce somehow went on to become the hooksmith du jour of the early noughties with a wall full of platinum plaques for the likes of Area Codes and 21 Questions, and Nate ended up unemployed but still alive today due to not being able to gorge himself on the junkfood, booze, and blunts which led to his two strokes. I 'unno, man, it's probably preferable alternative to having to listen to the Slaughtahouse album for the Royce verses, right?

Dre can make up for the debacle that Detox is bound to be by finally leaking the pre-The Way I Be Pimpin' version of the song King Tee is rumoured to have rapped on for his shelved 1998 Aftermath album Kingdom Come which was one of the few songs from those sessions to elude the clutches of the dudes who bootlegged the album back in 2002.