The vice Guide To Dj Quik

If there’s anybody you need to be jocking in this rap game (besides Ghostface) it’s DJ Quik. Dude is a West Coast legend. Peep game: he’s been jheri-curling it for over twelve years, has rhymes that make Too $hort sound like a feminist and beats that got Dr. Dre shook. He gets love from gangbangers and URB magazine readers alike. All his records are classics (except maybe one), but for some reason he got jinxed with every release. And although he’s known for crafting highly orchestrated funk that sounds like 1976, Quik is currently changing his musical approach, as evidenced by the ridiculous Bollywood-meets-Compton gangsterpiece he produced for Truth Hurts. Apparently, there is more of that to come on his new independent album, Under Tha Influence. In the meantime, here’s a career retrospective, from an old G’s perspective.

Quik Is the Name
(Profile, 1991)
We did that record just to make money in the neighborhood. We didn’t want to sell drugs and we really didn’t want to work at Taco Bell no more. So we started doing underground tapes and putting the homies’ names in them cuz we figured “even if we can’t rap or these beats suck, if we just mention one of the homeboys’ names they’re going to spend ten dollars on this motherfucker, so we’re going to be making at least a good twenty dollars a day.” We were the first people to come out rocking red, doing it the gangsta way from a Blood core. I think that was a selling point: We were the first Bloods doing it and we had talent. We weren’t just run-of-the-mill bustas. Recording the album was a weird thing for me cuz I had never been in the studio before, with all them knobs and shit. Keep in mind I was just a 19-year-old dude, like I didn’t really know nothing. So the shit comes out like January 21st of 1991 and my life has never been the same since.

Way 2 Fonky

(Profile, 1992)

That was me after the first album went platinum, trying to deal with this fame. We went back into the studio and I ended up doing the whole thing by myself. It came out pretty decent. I mean, it went gold and we had “Just Like Compton” and “Way 2 Fonky,” but I wasn’t really happy.

Safe + Sound

(Profile, 1995)

Between Way 2 Fonky and Safe + Sound I went through a lot of bullshit: family member changes, fighting all the damn time, shoot-outs, and shit going on. Profile still wasn’t respecting me or paying me, so that’s when I started hanging out with Suge Knight. He went to the label, “talked” to them and sure enough they gave him some money for me. Musically, I think this was one of our best records. My mentor Roger Troutman had shown me some tricks with the talkbox and I had all my musician people around me. We experimented with everything from simple, late ’70s to early ’80s funk like Parliament, Cameo, and Zapp, to some straight-up jazz. We just knew this album was going to go platinum. Suge tried to get promo money from Profile and they didn’t want to do business with him no more. So the album lost its bullet. A great record had to suffer because of business and politics.

Rhythm-al-ism

(Arista, 1998)

I spent my own money doing this record and when I took it to Profile they wasn’t hearing it. I was like, “Just give me what y’all said you would give me in the contract and I’m cool. I’ll take them cookie crumbs.” Keep in mind I signed back in the day when record contracts was nothing but dildos, fuckin’ the shit out of a nigga with no Vaseline. Luckily I had done “Let’s Get Down” with Raphael Saadiq and that caught the attention of Clive Davis at Arista. He ended up buying Profile. Then, when we was ready to put the record out, my best friend got killed. My whole head got fucked up. If you look at that picture of my face on the cover, I don’t look that confident. I was fucked up in the head and so hurt.

Balance & Options

(Arista, 2000)

It was fun working with Clive Davis, he taught me a lot of game. But Clive got ousted. I was like, “If Clive ain’t gonna be here, I don’t want to be here.” I did a record with intentional bad songs on it so I could get off this label. It’s a bunch of demos, really. Unfortunately it’s a mark on my reputation. Forgive me for Balance & Options man, I just had to get free.

Under Tha Influence

(Euponic, 2002)

I’m completely independent now and it’s a different sound. West Coast music can get boring real quick, being totally P-Funked out all the time. I mean, look at it like this: Everything goes in cycles. Roger Troutman, he was a student of Bootsy Collins and them, who were students of James Brown. And that’s where I’m starting over: I maxed out the Zapp sound, I maxed out the Funkadelic sound, so I’m back to the pure James Brown shit. The SP 1200 and James Brown records, where hip hop started. I felt like experimenting and having fun with shit again. It’s like Corn Flakes every day will drive me crazy. Sometimes I need some Frosted Flakes, sometimes I need some Apple Jacks. Sometimes I need some pussy — you know, I got to keep it moving.

BUSTA NUT

DJ Quik’s Under Tha Influence album is out on Euponic/Universal, homie

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