Rapper Warren G.: The ‘G’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Gangsta’ : Pop music: With funky, complex bass lines and pretty melody, the music on his debut album isn’t like Dr. Dre or Snoop Doggy Dogg.

“Man, I coulda been dead . . . dead .”

Looking rather unnerved Warren G.--the younger brother of rap superstar Dr. Dre and now high on the pop charts himself with the Top 10 single “Regulate”--was talking about his brush with death not long before.

Slumped in a chair in a West Hollywood hotel lounge, the lanky 23-year-old (real name Warren Griffin) explains that he choked on a piece of steak in his room a half hour earlier. Fortunately a buddy, using the Heimlich maneuver, saved him.

“I thought maybe I’d be snuffed out by a bullet one day--but not a piece of steak,” says the soft-spoken, easy-going rapper.

Griffin--a longtime pal of Snoop Doggy Dogg, who’s currently facing murder charges--manages a slight laugh at the irony of his narrow escape.

Though the Long Beach native looks like anything but a tough guy, he says he had some real brushes with death during his gangbanging days, as well as some scrapes with the law.

But such problems, he insists, are all behind him.

“I’m so law-abiding now, it’s scary,” he quips.

His main focus for the past year has been his debut album, “Regulate . . . G Funk Era,” which was released Tuesday by Def Jam Records. It includes “Regulate,” which features Nate Dogg and a sample of the old Michael McDonald hit “I Keep Forgettin’.” This single is the hit that’s helped make the “Above the Rim” soundtrack album a fixture in the pop Top 10.

Boasting funky, complex bass lines and pretty melody, Griffin’s music isn’t gangsta rap a la Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg.

“That’s fine for Snoop and Dre to do gangsta rap but that’s not the direction I want to go in on my own albums,” he explains. “I don’t want to read in some tabloid that some guy got inspired by some gangsta rap tune I did and then went out and got shot in some shootout.”

In some circles if you’re a rapper who doesn’t do gangsta rap, it’s open season on your manhood. He’s well aware of that. In his most macho tone, the usually soft-spoken Griffin snapped: “Just because I don’t do that stuff doesn’t mean I’m a sissy. Anybody who messes with me will find that out in a hurry.”

Griffin was just as huffy about the notion that he’s riding on Dre’s coattails. (They’re actually half-brothers.) “That’s not what happened,” he insists. “I was offered this deal with Def Jam based on them seeing me in a video with Mista Grimm. They didn’t know I was Dre’s brother. By the way, Dre is not on my album. He was going to do a track but he didn’t have time. So nobody can say I’m using him that way.”

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Maybe Dre didn’t personally get him signed to a deal but Griffin might not have been in a position to command a contract if his rich and famous relative hadn’t helped him along the way. Griffin’s recording debut was a small speaking part on a 1991 album by N.W.A, the quintessential gangsta rap group featuring Eazy-E, Ice Cube and Dre.

Griffin, who rapped with Snoop Dogg as a youngster in a group called 213, also helped with some of the lyrics on “The Chronic,” Dre’s blockbuster 1992 album.

Also, meeting director John Singleton through Dre led to Griffin producing and rapping on Mista Grimm’s “Indo Smoke” and 2Pac’s “Definition of a Thug” for the soundtrack for Singleton’s movie “Poetic Justice.” Def Jam executives, Griffin says, spotted him in the “Indo Smoke” video, which led to his record deal.

Griffin, though, does give his older brother full credit for inspiring him to become a producer.

“I used to watch him work when I was a teen-ager and I was fascinated by producing,” he recalls. “I asked him to show me how to do it and he showed me. I started deejaying and mixing (songs) at parties and kept at it until I got better.”

How did he make the move from producing to rapping?

“I could always do both, but I’d always been focusing more on producing,” he replies. “I could rap and everybody else around me was always rapping because it was the hip, flashy thing to do. But when I was younger I always got a real rush from doing what a producer does.

“I remember when I was 14 or 15, being in my house working with a small drum machine and mixing on a turntable while Snoop was rapping. That was great. Even then I could see myself headed for a producing career.”

But when he was growing up, struggling through Long Beach Jordan High, he didn’t seem headed for anything but trouble. “I was hustling, doing a lot of the wrong things,” he recalls. “I’m not sure I had any real strong goals. But I had one thing going for myself--I always wanted to make my own way, to be independent. I didn’t want to lean on my parents or Dre--though Dre has helped me with money and let me live with him for a year.

“My momma didn’t think I would amount to anything. She’d say: ‘Stop that damn rapping and get a job.’ I can see her point now. I was just drifting along, as teen-agers do. But I got lucky. I made a few right decisions and got some breaks. She’s proud of me now, which really makes me feel good.”

When he was in his teens, one of the few constants in his life was music. Griffin recalls whiling away hours listening to his father’s jazz and R&B; albums. “I would listen to all that stuff and dream a little about making music myself one day,” he says. “At the time it seemed like just silly kid’s dreams.”

Just about then the waiter served Griffin a late lunch--a huge steak. “Wouldn’t you think I’d be scared of eating steak again after what just happened?” he asked. “No way. That’s not the way I am. I ain’t scared of anything. “