On any another evening, a conversation among fathers about their sons and sports would be considered mundane. All fathers think their boys have a shot at making it in the league. But tonight, the words coming from these thirtysomething dads resonate with a special flair, because the three amigos musing over Pop Warner football are Warren Griffin, Calvin Broadus, and Nathaniel Hale. Better known to G-funk fans as Warren G, Snoop Dogg, and Nate Dogg, they are three of the most highly revered and beloved OGs in the R&G game. (That’s “original gangsters in the rhythm-and-gangster trade,” for y’all that ain’t up on the game.)

These childhood friends are legends of the Billboard charts and also get mucho props from mean-mugging Rolling 60’s Crips and DAMU Bloods. Since first appearing on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic in 1992, they’ve literally put their hometown of Long Beach on the hip-hop map. All have weathered sour record deals – Snoop on Death Row, Warren on Def Jam, and Nate on Elektra. It’s somewhat miraculous that they’ve even survived to reunite as their first incarnation: 213. When they formed 213 in the late 1980s, Nate, Calvin, and Warren were homies from Eastside LBC who loved rapping and singing. Their name (taken from what was then the city’s area code) was inspired by Oakland rapper Richie Rich’s Bay Area group called 415.

So what’s happening here, inside a top-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, is truly a decade-old promise finally fulfilling itself. Long before they were all multiplatinum superstars, these boys were riding Huffys, chasing spandex skirts, being jumped into the Crips gang, and rapping in garages all over Long Beach. So, it’s not too surprising when, after stepping into the room about two hours late on this muggy Saturday in July, they survey the scene and, almost on cue, Snoop demands a small chronic break: “Let us step into this other room for a minute and have a conversation.” (After all, no 213 interview would be proper without the smell of “sticky icky ooh wee” in the air.)

Sufficiently smoked, the trio returns, ready to chop it up with reporters from hip-hop and automotive magazines, German TV crews, and even BET’s Access Granted show. Sitting arm-to-arm on a couch, Warren, Nate, and Snoop are all wearing long-sleeved, USC-colored jerseys with a huge “213” on the front and back. (“USC is No. 1 in the nation. Like them, we are a super group,” insists the CEO of Doggystyle Records.) Sliding his Ponys with the fat burgundy laces on the table, Snoop says 213’s new album, The Hard Way (due out on Tuesday, August 17), was the best labor of love he’s ever been down with.

“We are really friends,” he says about his two homeboys. “For real. All our kids know each other. Like, for example, Warren G’s kids is a little younger than mine, so my kids got the ups on them. Meanwhile, Nate’s kids are older than mine. So they are a little bit better in sports. I told him to go on and play for the Raiders,” Snoop teases, elbowing Warren G. “But he got him playing for the Cowboys.”

Warren acknowledges that Dallas is cool, but it’s just a different football mind than wild-ass Oakland. “I’m just getting his fundamentals together,” Warren says about his young namesake. “Y’all gone see him in the NFL one day.”

After laughing among themselves and getting lost in their own conversation (as real friends often do), Snoop gets back to their reunion. “It looks easy, because you see three successful artists together. But actually, it’s hard for us to get back together because of all that we’ve been through.”

Warren’s longtime manager and uncle, Wron G., has known all of them since they were kids. Looking at his “nephews” assembled on the couch, he grins like a proud papa. “They’ve never been apart,” he says. “It’s just the business that kept them from working together. When I see them in the studio together, I get chills, because I know that most of us make vows early in life when we are young to achieve a goal together. Think of two buddies that you know from back in the day and the things you promised each other. It usually never happens. But for these guys, it did.”

LONG BEACH IS A MOTHERFUCKER

United by an affection for soul classics by the Dramatics and Teddy Pendergrass, and the funk of George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, the members of 213 came of age when Roger Troutman or Sly & the Family Stone would pump out of Chevy Impalas, Bel Airs, and Cadillacs on Pacific Coast Highway or Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Long Beach. Back then, Warren’s stepbrother Dr. Dre was putting Compton on the map, as well as pissing off the FBI, with “Fuck Tha Police” and “Gangsta Gangsta.” Meanwhile, Nate was singing in the church choir, where his sports-loving buddy Snoopy was sitting in the front pew every Sunday.

“We grew up in the same neighborhood ever since elementary, all the way up,” recalls Warren G in his trademark Southern drawl. “We’ve done a lot of things together, sold candy, played sports, and all of that. Snoop stayed on 19th and Lewis. I stayed on 21st and Lewis. And Nate and Snoop went to church together. We all played youth sports around the neighborhood in Long Beach.” As they got older, he recalls, they went their separate ways but still were drawn to each other. “One day after high school, when Nate was fresh out the Marines, we got together. We wanted to make something happen with the music, but wasn’t nobody giving us a chance. So we started doing underground tapes. We formed a group called Three the Hard Way. We put out songs like ‘Long Beach Is a Motherfucker’ and ‘I Don’t Like to Dream About Getting Paid.’ We just put that shit out and let people hear it.”

Despite being a phone call away from super-producer Dr. Dre, the group didn’t get put on just because Warren was family. Family ties actually made it harder. “Since Dre was my brother, I was going to him and telling him that Snoop was tight,” Warren remembers about their breakthrough moment. “One day we went to a bachelor party, and they didn’t have any music, and I popped in a 213 tape. Dre was like, ‘Who is that?’ It was our group. Dre said, ‘That shit is dope. Y’all come to the studio on Monday.’”

Still, there were other hurdles. At the time, Warren G and Snoop weren’t speaking. “Snoop didn’t believe me,” Warren recalls. “We used to go at it. We were actually arguing when I played Dre the tape. So I called Snoop [after Dre invited them to the studio], and he said, ‘Naw, nigga, fuck you.’ But I said, ‘Please don’t hang up the phone.’ So I called Dre, and Dre was like, ‘I want y’all to come through.’ Snoop was speechless. That’s how it got started.”

Ironically, what cemented their reunion this year was the success of a mixtape single. Last summer, the trio remixed Monica’s “So Gone” into “So Fly” on a Snoop Dogg mixtape. It became a No. 1 hit at L.A. rap stations like Power 106. That got them to kicking around ideas. Soon, they were mastering the new album and filming a video.

“I knew it would happen,” Snoop insists. “But it had to be the right situation. Warren G always believed in 213, more than anybody else. We had to see what Warren was really talking about. And when I started doing shows recently, people kept asking me, ‘What’s up with 213?’ Then I started to feel what Warren was saying. We weren’t really doing nothing, so we might as well go in the studio.”

Hoping to spark some of the magic of anthems like Snoop’s “Ain’t No Fun (If the Homies Can’t Have None)” and Warren’s “Game Don’t Wait,” they kept it organic. So, instead of throwing around a lot of money for big-name producers like Timbaland or the Neptunes, 213 created a classic set of gangster tracks closer to their roots.

“We did it at my house to make sure it felt right,” Snoop says. “That was important. We stayed in-house. We wanted to make this record something special. It had to represent what we were going through when we first got together, when we were struggling.”

“We make hit records together,” chimes in Warren G. “We have a special chemistry. Snoop is able to do his own thing and call his own shots. Nate is able to call his own. And me, too. We are not dealing with no more record companies telling us we can’t do our record together. So now that we can finally do it, we putting it down.”

Nate feels the same way about his fellowship with Snoop and Warren. “We started as solo artists, so that helped us out a lot,” he says. “Most people start as a group, and then people start getting in their ears and telling them they are bigger than the group. And that creates a rift. We don’t have those problems. This is a true friendship.”

GANGSTAS DON’T DANCE (THEY BOOGIE)

Right now the West Coast needs this 213 album, especially because summertime is in full bloom. And slick, laid-back G-funk tracks are what Snoop, Nate, and Warren do best. The distinctly L.A. feel of the collection was done in hopes of sparking some love between Cali hip-hop artists. It’s about time the West Coast offered some sort of a rebuff – or at least a friendly challenge – to the Southern crunk-dominated rap scene. With damn near every artist jocking that crunk Lil Jon style, the West Coast hasn’t seen this type of revival since Dr. Dre’s last album.

“L.A. has no unity, no structure,” Snoop laments. “If you notice one thing about the South, it’s that they have unity. Everybody is in everybody’s video; they are on each other’s songs. You got certain people out here on the West who don’t like each other for whatever reason. And that creates havoc and tension.” But the public wants to see artists having a good time, he maintains. “Like us in 213, we all have great solo careers. But for us to come together, it shows unity, so it will say something to the public that the West Coast is uniting on the love tip. We will make those up under follow. And ain’t nobody up over us but Dr. Dre,” he says.

“213 is not just a number, it’s a movement,” Snoop continues. “Because at one point, ‘213’ represented all of Southern California. Whether you were in Orange County, San Gabriel Valley, Long Beach, or Compton, it was all 213. We are saying Southern Cali is on the move again. We are gonna be out front and revive the movement.”

With 25 million units sold among them, 213 ain’t got nothing to prove. So, like any veterans, they sought out a distributor that would give them big publishing points and creative freedom. That right place ended up being TVT Records, Billboard’s current independent label of the year. The scrappy boutique label fought Def Jam and won. It has also scored with Ying Yang Twins, Lil Jon and Tha Eastside Boyz, and Snoop’s other group, the Eastsidaz.

“Ultimately, I love Snoop,” beams a ponytailed Steve Gottlieb, cofounder of TVT, explaining why he signed 213 as a group. “We’ve had a lot of success with him. And I’m a huge fan of Nate, who we tried to sign before he went to Elektra. And I love Warren, too. But, honestly, we are in [such] a great mode of breaking new artists like Lil Jon, Ying Yang, Jacki-O, and Pitbull that I wasn’t really looking to do the project until I heard the music. But the music is so awesome and such a statement. It’s a classic record. It’s one of those you wanna marinate in.”

Southern Cali is already eating up the DJ Pooh-produced lead single, “Groupie Luv,” an obvious celebration of the booty perks of being a world-famous entertainer. It was actually the last song made for the album. The track “Gotta Find a Way” explores the trio’s journey from street-level youngsters to extra-paid MCs. The Kanye West produced “Another Summer” feels and smells like 100 spokes spinning, barbecue sauce, and Daisy Duke shorts.

I WANT IT ALL

Warren is the creator of G-funk, the artist who resurrected Def Jam and produced one of the best-selling rap albums with his debut, which yielded the mega-hit “Regulate.” He’s the glue of 213, the one who encourages his boys when life’s dramas feel too overwhelming.

“Warren G is what I call an assist man, because, without him, none of us would be in the game,” Nate Dogg explains. “He’s the guy that would knock down Dr. Dre’s door and play him our music. He’s the guy that kept us interested in hip-hop back in the day, making beats and scratching.”

Known in the LBC for DJ skills, Warren G was eager to reinvent himself in 2004. His usually lazy flow feels more energetic than ever before. “It’s like a reinvention of Warren G,” he says. “I’m more hardcore on this record. It’s not the same. I went hard on the yard on this one. People are expecting to hear me with the smoothness, so I took it to the streets.”

Originally, Warren G almost signed with Suge Knight and Dr. Dre at Death Row Records. Not doing so ended up being one of the best decisions of his career.

“That nigga Simon [Suge Knight] was hating on Warren G,” Snoop says. “He didn’t believe in Warren, and didn’t think he was dope. And that’s what it was. But Dre didn’t say too much about it, because I think he really wanted Warren to get it on his own. He seen what Warren had, and he knew that being under Death Row would be too much expectation for him. Since [Warren] was Dre’s brother, everybody would have been scrutinizing his project. It was better that he got with Russell [Simmons and Def Jam]. He stood on his own two feet. Suge Knight was just a hater.”

MUSIC AND ME

The supreme record-holder for feature appearances, and one of the early hybridizers of rap and R&B, Nate is the only singer who could retool Klymaxx’s “Men All Pause” into “Girls All Pause” ´´ with Kurupt (who worked with Nate in the Death Row crew Tha Dogg Pound) and have you singing the chorus. His manager, Rod McGrew, boasts that Nate has probably appeared on albums totaling well over 100 million units sold.

“He’s in a league of his own, and what he’s given the concept of ‘side artist’ is that he’s breathed life into it. It’s a signature voice that makes everyone better,” says McGrew. “When they deliver the track and have that Nate Dogg voice on it, it just takes it up another notch.

McGrew’s bias is obvious, but there’s no denying that, other than Puff Daddy uttering “take that” or “I thought I told you we won’t stop,” nobody has blessed more songs with that gravy-rich baritone.

“It’s not just the voice,” McGrew says as the party in the suite winds down, “but the creativity and what Nate does with it on a record. And if you notice, you can listen to 20 different songs from him, and none of the hooks are the same. That’s valuable, because when an artist reaches out to him, they know Nate’s gonna bring them a unique and tailored chorus.”

For Nate, it all comes back to the choir. He still relies on the church sounds that raised him. “I just be Nate Dogg,” he says. “God gave me this voice, and I am going to use it ’til I can’t no more.”

PAID THE COST TO BE THE BOSS

Watching Snoop snake through the Crossroads club inside the Mandalay Bay, it’s obvious he’s a larger-than-life character whose style could never be duplicated. Ever. Girls inch up closer on him, and surfer white boys respond like he’s their brother. A mainstream actor with credits in Training Day, Starsky & Hutch, and the forgettable Soul Plane, Snoop is a bona-fide Hollywood superstar. But, no matter how many endorsements or slang phrases he creates, he still deals with the same old drama from his old label. Yet, despite death threats, numerous fights, and a gazillion dis records, Snoop looks back fondly on the Death Row era.

“That’s a part of my life that’s sad and happy,” he says. “What people don’t understand is that, despite all the hate and animosity from them towards us, it still was a lot of fun. We made that label what it was.” But Snoop has clearly moved on. “I’m not really focused on giving any attention to those guys,” he insists. “They haven’t made a hit record since we left. So they need to catch up to where we at right now. We are trying to keep this West Coast music scene alive. We are just trying to make good music and represent something positive. A lot of these youngsters really look up to us and will follow what we do if we put hate mail out there.”

When asked what he thinks of former Dogg Pound member Kurupt’s recent return to Death Row (now just known as Tha Row Records), Snoop defers to Nate, who says, “Who? Who is that? If he ain’t in 213, I don’t care where he’s at.”

Snoop also hates to see New Yorkers imitating L.A. gangster life. “It’s new to them, and they are infatuated with what they think is cool. But at the same time, it was cool for us when we first were gangbanging. But, like we learned the hard way, so will they. Gangbanging ain’t cool. Ain’t nothing but death and jail at the end of that.”

GROWN-UP GANGSTERS

Since we’re in Vegas, you can’t help but wonder about the odds. What if we matched up 213 against L.A.’s other respected trio, Westside Connection? Is 213 doper than Mack 10, WC, and Ice Cube? Is Warren G hotter than Mack 10? Hmmm.

Nate Dogg and WC. Different styles. Can’t compare them. And Snoop versus Cube. Both have been among the most consistent hip-hoppers of all time. OK, it’s a draw.

Of course, you can’t lay odds on whether 213’s new record will be a blockbuster. So many albums drop every week. But Snoop feels like he’s holding onto a sleeper.

“I think it’s going to catch people off guard, because there isn’t a lot of hype on it,” Snoop says. “It ain’t really talked about as a big record coming out this year, and ain’t nobody really expecting it, but it’s a great record with a lot of good songs on it. It says a lot, and it means a lot. I think it’s going to be one of those classic records that sneaks up on you.”

No matter how much the record sells, one thing won’t change: Snoop, Nate, and Warren will continue to make music together. It’s all they know. Riding ’til the wheels fall off, they be old and gray, still trying to C-Walk and create something gangsta.