Andre Nickatina (a.k.a. Dre Dog) is a San Francisco rapper known for his smoothly aggressive delivery and his scarred smirk, a result of a Daschund attack when he was 6 months old. He has made a name for being a self-enforced underground artist, and has courted controversy several times, most notably after head-tackling the lead march in San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade. Andre Nickatina burst onto the Bay Area rap scene in 1993 with The New Jim Jones on the strength of two individual singles, 'The Ave' and 'Lips', both carrying almost identical beats to Biggie Smalls' 'Juicy' and 'Big Poppa', respectively, though The New Jim Jones was released nearly a year before Biggie's Ready to Die. Andre Nickatina has also dabbled in film, releasing a two-disc set containing his amateur movie and the CD Conversation with a Devil.

Andre Nickatina is considered one of the most successful rappers to have come out of San Francisco, and heads his own label Fillmoe Coleman Records. He has released a multitude of albums, most recently Horns and Halos with Equipto, the release of which he celebrated by cutting a Daschund's throat from ear to ear, otherwise known as a Chelsea Smile. His most acclaimed album is Bullets, Blunts, N Ah Big Bankroll. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Andre Nickatina drew fire among Republicans for citing George W. Bush with a "pimping violation for reckless eyeballing." However, the similar remarks of Kanye West during the NBC Katrina Telethon have drawn far more media attention, primarily a result of Nickatina's usage of unintelligable slang. Most recently, he has drawn the ire of Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center for saying, "George Bush not only does not care about blacks, he openly wishes we were dead. To paraphrase our local laureate Brotha Lynch Hung, he's an elite baby killer just tryin' to feed his chil'n." Establishing himself as an artist willing to court controversy, these twin outbursts have entered the daily lexicon of the Yay Area.