Colonel Loud has lived in Florida, Atlanta and North Carolina, but he dedicated his breakout single to California — more specifically California marijuana.

The Mr. Hanky-produced track recalls the type of West Coast groove that Dr. Dre pioneered and samples Frankie Beverly and Maze’s 1983 track “ We Are One.”

Originally “California” featured Young Dolph and Ricco Barrino, until Empire Distribution founder Ghazi Shami was able to secure a verse from T.I.

In an annotation session with Genius briefly explained how the track came about:

My homie was shopping out beats for Mr. Hanky and I liked the beat. And he just pitched it out there like ‘Yeah man, you gotta talk about California on it and how you go out to Cali all the time.’

Hanky’s beat just had that California feeling — palm trees and sunshine.

It just went from there. He got Ricco to sing the hook and then Dolph came into town. We got him to fall through.