Mac Dre will always be a legend out here in the bay (he's like our 2-Pac). Dude has a deep catalog with a lot of underground bay area gems.
He was pretty well known in the places posters mentioned already including Alaska.
Unfortunately his influence was only really felt after his passing. Everybody here was on that "RIP Mac Dre" shyt. Lot of dudes were running around rocking Dre air-brush t-shirts. Dudes swagger jacked his look with the over-sized funny looking glasses and a lot of other shyt. Thizz Ent was eating really good doing shows and dropping CD's on a consistent No Limit in the late 90's wave for a few years after his death.
Shortly after Dre died 40, Short, Quinn, and Mistah Fab (motherfukkers thought he was going to be the one to carry Dre's torch or some shyt) re-emerged and jumped in the hyphy lane heavy.
40, Short, and Fab did some tracks with Snoop and that's how it spread out to LA and shyt.
Than eventually shyt just phased out and was lil jon crunk status.
A lot of out of town rappers come out here and name drop Dre to get a pop out of people. More than half the time, i don't even think these motherfukkers ever even listened to one of his tracks