Features

Tech Sessions #22

DJ Quik
DJ Quik is a legend, so do I really even need to set him up with an intro? Nah didn’t think so. Tech Sessions spoke with him right before Christmas and as you can see, he’s one of the realest dudes doing this.

So let’s jump-off your projects first. You have a new label deal with Warner Brothers right?

Yeah, I sure do. I am basically going to sign young artists. I’m not going to tie somebody down to a 50 year contract or anything like that. I have been through those debacles and for awhile, I was really torn for a direction as far as which way I should go.

There was a lot of negatives around me for awhile. I had ghetto-ass lawyers and trusting them when it came down to making the right moves left me scared and bruised.

So I just stopped. I mean completely stopped and I let things come to me and then I felt like I really started making the right moves. I just got really quiet and the right deals started to present themselves. One of the better ones, actually the best one, was the one I took.

It wasn’t that long that I got really silent that I heard Warner Bros.' Tom Whaley wanted to meet with me. You can’t turn that down, so I went and met with him. It was tight and it wasn’t because he discovered Tupac, sold a million copies of Cher’s greatest hits without anybody really noticing, and can sell ice cream to an Eskimo. He has such a really cool and strong energy. It felt like it was supposed to happen, like there was something divine that happened that I got a lot of the right people around me now.

The DJ Quick trademark has been the ability to flip from artist to producer to engineer to, of course, DJ like it wasn’t shit. How did you manage to nail down this chameleon act?

I figured out how to be a jack of all trades and a master of none first. Then I started mastering all of my trades. I think it has something to do with my ADD and not being able to sit still to get the whole lesson when I had youthful energy.

As I got older, I became more calm and focused. But when it comes to programming a drum machine, I don’t think anybody can fuck with me. I know the mathematics of it so well that I can just speak and it's just the way I want it. My development there has always been very advanced.

But there were periods of my life though where the stars didn’t align just right and shit didn’t come off the way it was supposed too. You know that record company shit and, I ain’t gonna lie, there were periods where I had a real cavalier attitude about everything. I thought I knew it all.

So I heard you recently had a big experience at the House Of Blues in Los Angeles. You gave a keyboard away from the stage?

Yeah. My thing is to keep sharing music. When I was playing that night I had this nice square patch up and the audience was just in tune with it and they just started singing it, they really became a part of it and I don’t know, I just thought I must share this with them and it was a classic Roland keyboard.

I just had it cleaned and everything so maybe somebody is going to write a dope ass song on it. Because when I put it out there in the crowd, you would think they would have ripped that shit up but they didn’t. The keyboard was crowd surfing!

One question, all of us young guns are trying to sort out is, what’s the best way to get on?

Wow. The good thing is that hip-hop is selling again. I think the game is open more now than it was if you got hot shit. If you want to make a name for yourself consistently like myself or Dre or Kanye West, you gotta be real hot. But I would say the field is being leveled.

Also, most of the shit is timing, like in football. When you get the ball man, you have to hit the right hole at the right time to get into the end zone. And you always have to have a good attitude. No matter what, you have to have that.

Glover is one-half of the production team Audio Assassins who own Gouge Music. You can find them at Audioassassins.com or contact him at glover@audioassassins.com.

Message Glover and tell him what you think!

Glover

« The Herbert Hollar  AAPRC Weekly: Candace Sandy »

The 2-Way

Replies: 4

Archives: