DJ Quik’s Top 5 Rapper-Producers Of All Time

If someone other than DJ Quik curated this "Top 5 Rapper-Producer" list, it would definitely include DJ Quik himself at the very top. As the Compton pioneer releases his latest album, The Book of David, we sat down with him to get his Top 5 Rapper-Producers of All Time, as well as a singer-producer who gets special consideration.

5. Eminem

DJ Quik: He knows how to rock the kick-snare. He knows how to rock the boom bap. He rocks that inside out. It sounds like he can hear the song already finished in his head. He just takes you into his head. He paints the picture so clearly, it's almost like you've heard the song before. He's really Quentin Tarantino-like with his records.

4. will.i.am.

DJ Quik: He's just a quirky, funky type of dude. He's a space alien and he knows how to make dance records without biting "Planet Rock" over and over again. He knows how to make 120 bpm records just live.

That's my guy right there. When Black Eyed Peas first came out, they were on some backpack, conscious rap then they took it to the club. He was smart enough to see where the business was going and he wasn't in bad company with Jimmy Iovine and his cohorts over there at Interscope.

They kind of designed a lane for those guys and it worked great, other than it was spectacular music with hooky hooks that you can't get out of your head.

3. Erick Sermon

DJ Quik: He gauged really serious records, sampled them and really made them timeless in tandem with his record. When you hear [Zapp's] "More Bounce To The Ounce" you don't even think about the original. You think about them guys, EPMD. What he did later with Clive Davis and "Music." He stood the test of time and he can just flow on his records.

2. Pete Rock

DJ Quik: He and C.L. Smooth had a thing and when he started rapping, you could tell he was the other side. You could tell he had more to do with C.L. Smooth's swag than you think. He was just like a voiceless name and he then became the man.

1. Dr. Dre

DJ Quik: It's for his uncanny sense of picking a hit. He has a real high ratio for hit records. He's a producer's producer because he pulls no punches and he knows that quality control is job one.

He never forgot that and he extended his career by taking chances, real big chances, like with Eminem. There was a big brouhaha that he turned into a business where he doesn't have to spend his own money anymore. Who wouldn't want to be that lucky?BONUS TAKE: Singer-producer: Raphael Saadiq:

DJ Quik: It's because of his hip-hop sensibility. He's got that Oakland thing, that Oakland stoke. That shit is like Too $hort. That's why it works for us. It keeps us tied into that era of Too $hort, that dope-ass era of hip-hop.

At the same time, he reinvented himself and did the whole Motown thing spectacularly, with great effect.

BONUS TAKE: Singer-producer: Raphael Saadiq:

DJ Quik: It's because of his hip-hop sensibility. He's got that Oakland thing, that Oakland stoke. That shit is like Too $hort. That's why it works for us. It keeps us tied into that era of Too $hort, that dope-ass era of hip-hop.

At the same time, he reinvented himself and did the whole Motown thing spectacularly, with great effect.

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http://djquikmusic.com/

FONKSTA'S GROOVE

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NPR Music Interview 2011

DJ Quik is an elder statesman of the West Coast rap scene. He dropped his first album, Quik Is The Name, in 1991 and set the tone for much of gangsta rap made in California that decade with his allegiance to Roger Troutman-style talkbox and Parliament Funkadelic samples. Since his debut, he's released eight more albums and produced tracks for 2Pac's album All Eyez On Me and Snoop Dogg's Ego Trippin' (with Teddy Riley and Snoop), and two years ago collaborated with Kurupt on BlaQKout.The man still loves '70s funk and R&B. He says his latest album, which will be released next week, called The Book Of David, is "really honest" and the first single, "Luv Of My Life," is "not to be overthought." He says it's punchlines and fun. To make it, he relied on the same company's drum machines that have been the standard in rap music since the late '80s, Akai, and he's proud of the result.He brought in Gift Reynolds, a rapper in his early twenties from the west side of Detroit to rhyme over the track. Gift says he was happy to work with Quik on "Luv Of My Life" in particular, because it sounds like the music Quik made back in the early '90s, the music he's still best known for.

How did this song come about?

We was just spending time in the studio about a month ago. Me and my brother G1 just started making the beat. I did the drums, he did the bass line. We did it in, like, 15 minutes. Just pretty much threw it together.

I left out of town to go do some business, came back a day later and G1 had developed the song into something else. It had piano on it already, so I just wrote that hook like, 'Wow. This is the love of my life. This is great.' Because it was so easy and fresh. I just loved the track. The track is the love of my life.

When you hear something that's new, and fresh, it makes you feel nostalgic.

What are the components to the song? How did you make it?

I use the MPC-3000 to produce still. The Akai drum machine is still the best ever. I use that and ProTools 8. I'm a real big fan of Native Instruments, Arduino, Sony Acid 6. All of those toys are just great, they're great DAW [digital audio workstations].

It's because all the soft samples [sounds offered to producers to edit through DAWs] now — it's going back to that retro sound. They're going back to that real '70s, '80s lush, brassy, stabby. It's pump your fist music again is what it is. It's like the '80s are back, and I love it.

How do you make it sound fresh now?

You just do it from an honest point of view, from right now. Nothing's new, I'm telling you. Everything that we're using has been used since the '70s. Michael Jackson was ahead of the curve. So was Marvin Gaye. [They both used] the Roland TR-808 drum machine on "Beat It" and "Sexual Healing," respectively.

With the title, are you referring to other hip-hop tracks like Erykah Badu's "Love Of My Life"?

Oh, you remember that record? Yeah! Erykah Badu is crazy. I love her. Maybe I am! Maybe it was a subconscious bite!

How does this track fit into the rest of your album?

It's kind of a standout because of how organic it was. My album is a masterpiece. It's thought-intensive, and it's honest. It's really honest.

We're having fun. I'm real materialistic. I'm making fun of what other people think the love of their life really is. Everybody thinks, 'Oh, this man. I just met this man.' Or, 'This woman.' It really is just what you like, or what you desire. Right now, I'm into cars and clothing and watches and stuff like that. It has nothing to do with my age. I've felt like this since I was 15. Same thing. I'd rather call it stages.

The record is funky, it's fun. Easy to perform. The video is dumb hot. I'm really proud of what we're doing right now. I'm not being arrogant about it, it's just that we've just done a good project, we're really proud of it and we're gonna see it all the way to the end.

How do you want people to listen to "Luv Of My Life"?

I want people to dance to it. It's a dance record. It's a groovy record that you feel. I've got smart keyboard players. It's not to be overthought. Just listen to the lyrics — punchlines and it's fun.

Who is the rapper on this track?

This kid's name is Gift Reynolds. He's an artist from Detroit. He's just a cool kid that has the tenacity [you need] for rap. He's actually right here with me, you want to talk to him?

Yes! How did you hook up with Quik for this track?

I linked up with him through our managers — they're good friends. He heard what I can do and that was that. [As far as this track,] it was overall good music, just the whole vibe. The structure of the song and how it was composed as a whole, it really caught my attention. To me, it was that DJ Quik that I grew up on.

How did you write your verses?

Off the head. I really don't use paper or a pen. I come from the heart. When you speak from the heart it's easier to make music that way. When you trying to write down stuff that you know that you're not used to doing, it's harder to make good music.

Were you referring to the Erykah Badu track with your verses?

Not at all.

Vibe Interview 2011

Quik Is The Name (1991)
“N.W.A. pretty much showed us all that we could have pride in our city of Compton because Compton was so tumultuous back then. It sucked to see all that oppression from the police and from the gang bangers. You were damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So when Eazy E and them came out representing Compton it made me feel proud to be from there. I was already a DJ at that time in the late ‘80s, but N.W.A. sparked me to really become serious with my lyrics. We were the real gangbangers. N.W.A. weren’t even bangers…they just played it so high up. But although we really lived that gang culture that’s not what it was all about with us. We were very family oriented. We showed the softer side of Compton.

Quik is the Name was originally supposed to be a mixtape that I was going to sell in the ‘hood. I recorded it on a Tascam four-track. I did all the over-dubs, all the blending, and mixed it down on one of those Maxwell metal tapes they used to sell. But along comes Dave from Profile Records looking for me like, ‘Hey dude, I heard your cassette, man. Come sign with us.’ [laughs] There was a bidding war between Fred Munao at Select Records and Cory Robbins and Profile. Cory ultimately ended up beating Fred out and I signed with Profile.

Profile gave me a $30,000 budget to mix the record over. So you do the math: a $1000 a-day studio…if we get Quik is the Name done in less than a month, that’s more money in my pocket. So we got it done in 17 days. We dumped everything out of the SP-1200, brought the turntables into the studio, scratched all the hooks, did all the overdubs and brought in a bass guitar player to fatten up the sound because we would lose a lot of the bass from sampling. We recorded some of the album at Westlake Studio on Santa Monica, which is where Michael Jackson did Thriller. It was a trip being in there mixing ‘Tonite’ on those big boards knowing that Michael was coming in and out of there.

My mom played Isaac Hayes’ ‘Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic’ all the time. That was my motivation for sampling it for ‘Born and Raised in Compton.’ It was a dog beat, very funky. But on the other hand ‘Tonite’ was pretty much R&B and some jazz. I sampled that from Kleer’s ‘Tonite,’ which came out I believe in 1981 on Atlantic Records. That record was so advanced for that time. That musical scheme was dumb, and to have it over a TR-808 beat that was bananas for me. I sampled it primarily for that groove and it was a good record to tell a story to, especially about growing up in the ‘hood.

Rappers weren’t going platinum a lot except for Run-D.M.C., Dr. Dre, Public Enemy and so on and so forth. So I still don’t understand how Quik Is The Name went platinum. I don’t question it, but I think I had a stroke of blessing at the right time. I had this edgy, dark live show that was kind of ‘hood-tinged, but it was still entertaining. I looked at myself as the average homeboy in the ‘hood; the one that made it. Ultimately I willed myself into the business.”

Way 2 Fonky (1992)
“I didn’t think that West Coast gangbanging would really permeate the nation. Then again, I was naïve. We would hear about all this violence happening in certain cities and we were apprehensive to go on tour in certain spots. I had trepidation about performing in Denver because they said all the Crips moved from L.A. to out there. I was like, ‘For real? I have to deal with this shit just to make a dollar [laughs]? The gang culture probably hurt the growth of a lot of neighborhoods. This is what I was trying to say on ‘Jus Lyke Compton.’

I grew up in gangs, so there was no way around it for me. After getting bullied a few times by Crips from the opposing neighborhoods, I decided that that was all I could stand. So I cliqued up with the Pirus and said ‘fuck it.’ It gave me a relief because people knew I had backup. They stopped breaking into my house and shooting up my mama’s house…shit like that. But ‘Jus Lyke Compton’ was basically me saying that I had no idea the same things were going on everywhere else from St. Louis to Texas. It was basically me saying, ‘Is there a way to quell all this gang violence?’ I didn’t know that I might be perpetuating all the gang shit. I just wanted the world to have fun.

With Way 2 Fonky I was just trying to put out an album every year like artists were doing. I was just trying to stay current so I could stay on tour. Plus, I wanted my boy Robert Bacon, who co-produced the record, to get his shine as a musician. He showed me a lot. He showed me the real way to do reggae. He taught me musical counterpoints because he writes music. He’s like my music teacher, so I just wanted him to ball out. We got the album done and it went gold in a week. I’m very proud of it.”

"Bitch Betta Have My Money" → AMG (1991)
“I had no idea this song was going to become so controversial. We were just sampling beats that we liked. AMG always had the pimping thing while I had the ladies man mentality. I don’t even know how I ended up with AMG. I was chilling with this guy named Greedy Greg, who I wanted to be my manager because he had my beat interests at heart. And Greg’s roommate was AMG. So I started taking my drum sounds down to Greedy Greg’s house and AMG started going through them, and to me that was stealing. I was sharing drum sounds back then with Battlecat and a lot of unknown DJ’s. And I was making my way through the L.A. circuit with Uncle Jam’s Army. But AMG started making beats with my drum sounds and that’s how ‘Bitch Betta Have My Money’ came about. Primarily, AMG made that beat, but he had to give me some of the production credit. But I like the beat to this day. That’s the only reason I let him use my kick and snare. It was funky.

During this time gangsta rap was taking a lot of hits from the politicians. We were on the frontlines [in terms of free speech]. I’m just glad all that drama kind of died down. Ironically, I didn’t know I would have so many daughters—I have two. This has obviously affected me because I don’t think I would want to play a song like ‘Bitch Betta Have My Money’ for my daughters [laughs]. I think that was a curse on me for making some of those records. God did that to me. He gave me girls [laughs].”

"Trust No Bitch" → Penthouse Players Clique feat. Eazy E, DJ Quik, and AMG
“I fell in love with the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique. I was flipping the records that I was hearing, so ‘Trust No Bitch’ was really one of the Beastie’s songs. They did the drum track and sampled it from one of those break beat compilations, and recreated it as a hip-hop record. They were just clowning on it, but I figured we could really funk out to it. And that’s pretty much what I did. And Eazy E coming to the studio back then…when that man walked in that shit was so powerful. He had like a bright light aura surrounding him. To be in the studio producing him and telling him what to do I was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m in here telling Eazy E to punch in some lyrics.’

Eazy would pull up in any sports car you could think of…a 300 Z…just living. Those were some of the best times ever. Working with Eazy honestly meant that I had arrived, and that I needed to start thinking more highly of myself because I was downplaying my power at that time. I was aligned with some very powerful people and I knew it had to be because of my talent.”

Safe + Sound (1995)
“I inadvertently shouted out MC Eiht from Compton's Most Wanted out on a mixtape. I didn’t do it in a disrespectful way because they were already successful. We were proud of anybody that came out of Compton. I respected Eiht. But when Eiht started dissing me, it was personal. That hurt my feelings…I’m not even going to lie. We just got dissed by Tim Dog (who made the incendiary diss record ‘Fuck Compton’), who didn’t even know us, and now I’m getting dissed by MC Eiht, a dude that grew up less than a mile from me. I couldn’t believe it. We kept going at it for two years. It was uncomfortable. He put out another record dissing me again and that was enough. I was hell bent.

I did [the single] ‘Dollaz & Sense’ for Safe + Sound. I was having physical fights while I was recording that album. That’s how over done I was with anger. That was a very dark period for me. And when I finished with that record all that anger was out of me. But honestly, ‘Dollaz & Sense’ wasn’t just about Eiht. I just channeled all my anger to his name. But it was also about the people around me. I was trying to take care of everybody. People were taking shit for granted.

Around the time, 2nd II None had started bringing Suge Knight around to the studio. Suge knew what I was doing. But I didn’t know he was going against Eazy because it wasn’t my business. Suge promised me the world, so I started working with him. I saw what he was building at Death Row, and I thought, ‘Oh…Dr. Dre is going to be there? Maybe I can establish myself over there.’ I was looking at it as a great business venture, and it was to an extent. I had Suge talking to Profile Records on my behalf because I didn’t understand all of the contract stuff. I was like, ‘If you can have them give me my royalty check, we are all good.’ So Suge got me some bread and before you know it we were cool.

The crazy thing is, outside of Safe + Sound, some of the business that was going on was crazy. Jimmy Iovine and Suge offered me and 2nd II None a production deal at Interscope. The number was so high that it freaked out Dion (a member of 2nd II None). He thought it was the devil…he was like, ‘Oh, they are trying to buy our souls!’ And I was like, ‘Man, are you stupid [laughs]?’ But Dion was like, ‘I have to go to God and ask him.’ I just told him, ‘You better go to the bank and cash this check. What are you doing this for? You are an idiot [laughs].’ But Dion turned the deal down. So we both lost the deal and I went back to Profile.

It ended up with me being a work-for-hire at Death Row, mixing all of those Tupac records and making sure all of the stuff got into the vault. I started cataloging those Death Row records and Suge gave me a handsome fee for that. But when I started seeing that Death Row was becoming run by gangbangers, that’s when I left. It didn’t rest well on my spirit. If I would have kept fucking around with Death Row I knew I would end up in a box.”

"Heartz of Men" → 2Pac (1996)
“This guy named Carlos has credit for making ‘Heartz of Men,’ and that’s the dumbest thing ever. They gave the credit away on the only 2Pac song I produced. But working with Pac was crazy. He’d sit down, grab a pen, a legal pad and a blunt, and write out all of his thoughts. He would record the shit, do the backgrounds and ask if you needed anything else. Then he would walk out that studio and go in another studio with Dr. Dre and do the same thing and then go in the studio with Johnny J and do the same thing. I was like, ‘This dude is a robot. We really need to take something from his work ethic because this shit is crazy.’

The Pac in his last days was very shielded. I went to his mansion in Topanga Hills in ’95 right before he passed. It was this big beautiful white house, but it seemed so empty. Looking back, I think he was a little lonely…there was no furniture in that house. He was purging his energy. It almost felt like he knew that his death was coming. He was egging it on. The Pac I like to remember is the Pac from Digital Underground who I was on tour with. I wish that guy was back. He was a bright eye, fast-talking Oakland genius. He was a ball of energy that you could never forget. When Pac died I cried like a baby.”

"Let's Get Down" → Tony! Toni! Tone! feat. DJ Quik (1996)
“I heard Tony! Toni! Tone!’s Sons of Soul album and I was just smitten. I was like, ‘These guys are dumb!’ I just wanted to be able to work with them at some point. My dream was to work with Raphael Saadiq because he’s bananas. When I heard ‘Lay Your Head On My Pillow’ it inspired me to buy a Wurlitzer 200 electric piano. I played a lot of it on Safe + Sound. Raphael Saadiq sparked me to go bigger. So we finally met and started ‘Let’s Get Down’ at Westlake studios. I had a break beat, hooked it up, did the cool drums around it and let Ray (Raphael Saadiq) hear it. And Ray was like, ‘I don’t want know keyboards on it…I don’t want it to be a G-Funk record. This has to be more of a popular record.’

So, I threw the Moog keyboard out the studio. I put it all on a 2-inch reel tape and gave it to Raphael and he put some guitar and vocals on it and sent it back to me. That’s when I brought more percussion to the record. I was playing triangles, shakers and bells. It took me two days to mix ‘Let’s Get Down.’ And when I was done, I was so proud of it. I felt like I did Tony! Toni! Tone! a real solid. I put them in the club…it was a club ‘hood record.”

"Ride On" → Snoop Doggy Dogg & Kurupt (Caught Up Soundtrack, 1996)
“I heard the original mix of ‘Ride On’ because Snoop and Kurupt did it with someone else. They called me in and said, ‘Quik, do you think could listen to this record and see if you could do anything with this?’ It wasn’t like I didn’t like the original track. It just didn’t seem like a track that fit Snoop and Kurupt. It sounded like a something that a fan of Hank Shocklee (of the legendary production crew the Bomb Squad) and them tried to produce but didn’t have the talent. So I called my boy Bacon over to the house. He started playing these crazy, eerie guitar parts. I programmed the MPC, we took a break and started drinking and smoking that good weed. Then we went back into the studio and re-built the song all the way up. Now listening back to that track, it’s really advanced. It’s a strange song, especially with the girl singing. She sings minor and then her vocals are augmented. It’s dark and beautiful at the same time. And Snoop and Kurupt rapped their asses off.”

Rhythm-al-ism → DJ Quik (1998)
“I really wasn’t in a good place mentally when I was working on this album. My best friend was murdered at my studio at my house. I don’t want to talk too much about it, but I was naive to some drugs that were starting to show prominence in the ‘hood. I didn’t know anything about meth, and somebody in my camp was doing it, and I was blindsided by that. I didn’t know meth made you do that kind of crazy shit. Here I am…I’m aloof and rich. I’m producing everybody and then this happened. I had to bury my friend and I kept that grief around for the longest. Then my nephew went to prison. And I needed both of those guys.

I’m a dude that doesn’t really know how to grieve. I thought you should bury yourself in your work. So I just buried myself in the making of Rhythm-al-ism without addressing the seriousness of what had happened. I didn’t know I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It started to show in my behavior. I was like, ‘Try to be me for a while. If you don’t like how I’m acting, fuck all of y’all.’ The saving grace for me was El DeBarge coming into my life. (El was featured on the Rhythm-al-ism tracks ‘Medley For A V’ and ‘Get 2Getha Again.’) He had dealt with his own tragedy with his brother Bobby dying. For me, El was the link to his brother’s music—Switch. For him to have my favorite falsetto voice ever on my record was one thing. But then to see he was a brother, a Detroit cool cat, we kind of naturally became good friends.

Back then, wasn’t nobody tripping on El getting high. Because he could get high and still nail a show. I never tried to intervene in his business. He was a grown man, and so was I. I was a drunk at that point anyway. I’m drinking and smoking weed everyday trying to run from my problems not realizing that the shit that was happening to me was very severe and life changing. But El was there for me. He sung at my boy’s funeral. He helped me with the production. He’s hella spiritual. I am grateful to El DeBarge to this day.

And working with Nathaniel (Nate Dogg) was always great. He was the kind of person that was the voice of reason. If some shit was going crazy, he was always there. I’ll tell you a story that I’ve never told anyone. When we performed at the Source Awards in 1995 in New York we did the Death Row Medley. This is when Suge got up onstage and took that shot at Diddy. When the audience turned on Death Row and started giving us these looks, me and Nate Dogg stood up back to back. Now I’m scared because the situation was crazy. I didn’t know that Nate Dogg had been a marine [laughs]. So Nate tells me, ‘Well, if you don’t let nobody hit me in the back of my head, then I won’t let nobody hit you in the back of your head.’ And I was like, ‘For sure.’ It’s funny thinking about that now. But niggas was ready to fight [laughs].

I love Rhythm-al-ism. I worked through adversity to get it done. It ended up having the beginning signs of music that I could call my own, which is a good mix of hip-hop, R&B or jazz. It’s a little gutter thing that happens when you add the drum machine because when the tracks are too pretty they are boring. Rhythm-al-ism was an amalgamation of all of my favorite musical styles and influences. If you listen to some of those records like ‘I Useta Know Her,’ those songs are really innocent, just talking about humping on a bad girl for the first time. I wouldn’t change a thing on Rhythm-al-ism. As a matter of fact, it’s my favorite record out of my catalogue.”

No Limit Top Dogg ("Doin' Too Much," Buss'n Rocks," and "Don't Tell") - Snoop Dogg (1999)
“I went to Snoop’s house to do those records. I helped him get his studio tight. We started recording and he dug what I did and we’ve been friends to this day. Snoop is the coolest dude. He’s the guy that you wish was your uncle. He should be the uncle to all kids. You think he’s a pimp because of how cold he could be on the hoes [laughs]. But he’s really just like the Peanuts’ Snoopy character. He’s not excitable. He’s never really emotional. He’s very calm and cool to work with. And that’s great. Because I’ve been accused of being too damn emotional [laughs].

"Fine" → Whitney Houston (2000)
“Raphael Saadiq got me involved with the Whitney Houston record. He let me come into the studio and remix it with him. Ray was pulling strings. He’s a bad boy. I met Whitney when she was married to Bobby Brown. They came to the studio and did a walk through. I even shook her hand like, ‘I got you Ms. Houston!’ I ended up really liking the ‘Fine’ record. Plus, Clive Davis was involved, and I’ll do anything for dude. Clive Davis is the greatest businessman I ever met. He’s a father figure for all musicians. I was humbled to be involved in that Whitney project. I can’t even really talk about it. I felt like Willy Wonka [laughs]. It was a dream come true.”

Balance & Options → DJ Quik (2000)
“I wasn’t giving it my all on this album. I was ready to be done with the business as far as being an artist. I didn’t think I was keeping up where the trends were going. I wasn’t rapping about the same things that everybody else was. I was pretty much just showing my prowess in the studio. Some people say Balance & Options is one of their favorite records. Me, I was just trying to build the career of Mausberg and pass him the gangsta rap torch because he had it. He had that in spades. I wanted to get him out there. But then they fucking murdered him. I had to finish his record and my record while he was dead. So I don’t think I was into the music. My mind was somewhere else. I was insane.

I crashed my motorcycle just stressing about Berg. I ended up in the hospital. Again, I was already suffering from PTSD from two years ago, and now Mausberg is dead. So what saved me? Gallons of vodka. I drank until I was numb. I tried to escape reality. I think I might have been slightly suicidal back then.”

"Jankie" - 8Ball & MJG (2000)
“I knew Tony Draper who ran Suave House Records [the label home of 8Ball & MJG]. I met Tony a couple of times while I was at Death Row. He was a music mogul and he actually came to my little apartment on the West side. I was like, ‘Wow.’ I just let him know how much I dug 8Ball & MJG. They were like the perfect duo in southern rap. Right after the Geto Boys, it was them. Those niggas was hard. And they were funky. Draper let me get in the studio with them and we did ‘Jankie.’ We also did another song called ‘Buck Bounce,’ which I thought was a throwaway. I was just doing beats at that point, but they liked it. We recorded it at the Enterprise studio when it was poppin’ out in North Hollywood. We had a good time out there.”

"Addictive" → Truth Hurts feat. Rakim (2002)
“I was hanging out with MC Lyte when I realized that I needed to take my music abroad. I needed to get out of this regional shit. And ‘Addictive’ was kind of a lucky thing. I’m brushing my teeth at home and I hear this music coming from this free channel called Z TV. There was this crazy music coming from the background and I didn’t even realize I was dancing to it [laughs]. I dropped the toothbrush, went to the TV and popped in a videotape to record the song. I got the audio from the tape, put it in my drum machine and went to the recording studio. I created the ‘Addictive’ track and I let MC Lyte rap on it. I thought it was going to be a Lyte record, but she didn’t kill it like I wanted her to.

So here comes Truth Hurts, and I had already been working with her, Nate Dogg, Dr. Dre and Suga Free. So I told Truth Hurts, ‘Hey, I since it’s your birthday, I think I have a birthday gift for you.’ She came over and got the CD and drove right off. A day later, I hear from Dre who tells me to come to the studio. I went up there to drop the song down to analog tape and had my boy play bass on it. I took it back to Dr. Dre and he called Focus to write some lyrics to it and Truth Hurts went in and did her vocal parts. When Dre had me come in and listen to the finished track, I was blown away. Next thing I know it was on the BEAT radio station in L.A. And when I heard it on the BEAT I lost my motherfucking mind [laughs]!

And Rakim being on that song was just crazy. If I put Eric B. & Rakim’s ‘Paid In Full’ cassette in a radio right now, I would still be the coolest guy on the block. To hear that Dre had that kind of access to Rakim and to put him on a song I produced?!!! He sounded like the Rakim we all knew and loved. It was like we won some type of hip-hop championship or something [laughs]. We should have gotten a hip-hop award for just that pairing of talent: Dr. Dre, Rakim, DJ Quik, Truth Hurts and Focus. It was amazing.”

Under Tha Influence (2002)
“At this point, L.A. Reid was coming into the Arista Record situation, and it was time for me to go. Amicably we supposedly split. But then I saw a press release that said Arista dropped DJ Quik. So I guess that’s what amicably means [laughs]. I still had a lot of money on that contract, but I was ready to become a label owner. I scouted around for some independent labels to try to align myself with, and the only real game in town was Bungalo Records, which was started by Paul Ring. So I’m thinking being independent I was going to sell about 200,000 records and get that independent money so I could build a studio compound. I was looking at my peers like DeVante Swing who had acres and acres of fucking land and studio space with all his toys in there. I was trying to do that, but I didn’t know Paul Ring and them had a shady way of doing business.

I ended up getting fucked on that Bungalo deal. It blew up in my face. That was pretty much a big mistake in my career. Even my lawyer advised me not to do it. I put my foot in the quicksand. But ultimately I got it together and went to Warner Bros. to do some A&R work. They had a great staff and great people. I was living in New York at this point. I started making music with Wyclef Jean and them. I was just trying to align myself with people that I am like. I was ready to take it to the next level at Warner Bros., but in comes Lyor Cohen and Kevin Liles, so I was out. That whole thing just proved to me that I needed to have my own label.”

"Justify My Thug" → Jay-Z (2003)
“Justify My Thug” started off as a funk sample. ‘Justify My Thug’ was very dark. It was almost like one of the theme songs that could have made it onto the Scarface soundtrack. It sounds like some Giorgio Moroder shit. That music was weird, so I was taking up that pattern. I wanted to do something quirky and strange. And I was hoping that Jay-Z dug it. The song still had a rhythm to it and Jay still laid into it rhyme wise. But it was definitely one of my more bizarre tracks. But it really worked because Jay-Z could rap over farts [laughs]. Now would a song like ‘Justify My Thug’ work today? No. It would be too risky. I don’t think I would take that chance.”

Trauma → DJ Quik (2005)
“On Trauma I started aligning myself with the southern artists like T.I. and Ludacris. The south was running the business. It was all about them. So to stay alive and be relevant you had to align yourself with the power players. We did those songs off of respect. Trauma was an independent album. I thought that I vented nicely on the intro, and those records still stand up for me. The production, however, wasn’t really musical. I was going for more barebones, more drum oriented songs. But there are some standouts. I still love ‘Fandango’ (featuring B-Real). That track is bananas. And there’s ‘Black Mercedes’ with Nate Dogg actually just singing lead, killing it, and not just doing a hook. Nate did that shit in one take! He fucked me up, man. I miss Nate Dogg.”

BlaQKout → DJ Quik & Kurupt (2009)
“BlaQKout only happened because Snoop Dogg and I was done with Ego Trippin’. I asked Snoop, ‘Kurupt is on tour with you all year around…is it cool if I borrow him from you for a couple of weeks to do a record?’ Snoop gave me his blessings and me and Kurupt did a record as men. Not as the two Death Row inmates [laughs].

At this time, I was hanging out with Jay-Z’s engineer Guru. And we would talk about how we should be a production team because we knew how to see music all the way in its totality. I see the end game of most of my tracks. For example, the ‘9x's Outta 10’ record on BlaQKout was purposely some shit that no one had ever done. I was using plug-ins from other hosts and mixing them with other hosts in my Pro-Tools. So I would have native instruments playing Sony Pro-6 samples and dicing them up. It became this crazy amalgamation of new technology.

BlaQKout was just fun. It was not pretentious. It was me and Kurupt being mature. We were both gangsta rappers. But why just do a gangsta rap record? Especially when people are shunning it. Gangsta rap is not even selling. You even got the big dogs saying that gangsta rap is dead. These are the people that made a living off of it. So where do you go? You try something different. You even go pop or alternative. Kurupt was open to it. To hear some of those weird quirky tracks it brought him to a place where he was really comfortable. It was crazy to see Kurupt that comfortable. I don’t know if I was ready for critics when they started to call BlaQKout a classic just from being the black sheep of the hip-hop world. But I knew in my heart that it was a unique record. I knew it was a record that I could put on years later and still like it.”

The Book of David → DJ Quik (2011)
“When I got into trouble and went to jail (On June 21, 2006, DJ Quik was convicted of the physical assault of his sister and sentenced to five months in prison. The incident happened in 2003 after police reported that Quik’s sister was extorting him.) I started to write my book. I wanted to call it The Book of David. I thought I was at the end of my life at that point. I was going to end up dead or in jail and I ended up in jail, so maybe God was trying to say something to me. Maybe I needed to start listening and stop being drunk and stop being hard headed. That’s when I decided to pen my book. But when I started remembering shit that happened to me when I was five-years-old, I dropped the pencil because it was too painful to look back at.

I wanted to tell the back-story of every record I ever made and what motivated me from heartbreak to being homeless. I went through all that shit. But I realized it would be easier for me to just put it to song. I don’t even have to write songs anymore. I just start rapping. What I was doing was having a catharsis. I was letting all the bullshit go. There’s no weird music on The Book of David. This shit is all barebones and factual. It’s not going to go over somebody’s head. I have Ice Cube on it…Dweli, Bun B…I got all these top names on it.

We had the album ready to go last year, but it got held up for the samples. Now usually, I would be cavalier about samples in the past and let them come after me. But I was proactive this time. I sampled Angela Bofill and the Grease Lightening soundtrack. I knew it was going to be expensive but I wanted to get them cleared. Now the clearance is coming through and the record is mixed. Now usually I would just hand the album in and say, ‘I’m done with it.’ But this time, I listened to it with objective ears. I listened to it as both DJ Quik and David Blake. I hope that’s not bi-polar [laughs].

The song ‘Hydromatic’ is pretty dope. It’s a club record and the kids really bug out to it. My headspace is different. I’m in a much more calm place. We are really showing off with this record. My other favorite records are ‘Real Women’ with Jon B, ‘Ghetto Rendezvous’ and ‘Luv of My Life.’ I have a record on the new album with the late Gary Shider from Parliament. Him and Bernie Worrell, the P-Funk All-stars, came to one of my recording sessions and turned my life upside down with the funk.

Lo and behold I found an artist in Detroit while I was DJing out there. Somebody slipped me his work and I played it right there on the spot. He grabbed the mic and started rapping. His name is Gift Reynolds. He looks like Drake, but sounds like me. I want people to know that my life and my music were plagued with mistakes. But sometimes mistakes are beautiful. Sometimes they are life changing. I’m not perfect. I’ve fucked up a lot. I got scars that will take an autopsy to remove. But I grew. I’m trying to be the man that I am and just grow. I want to be remembered as one of the greats; to be up there where the Quincy Joneses are. I’m always working towards that.”

JON b feat QUIKSTA!!!2011

DJ Quik feat Hi-C & Suga Free Live @ LA Dub... von Worldwide-Westside-Ent

Making the Video