DJ Quik says he was able to witness Dr. Dre craft his alleged swan song, Compton: A Soundtrack By Dr. Dre, and says he was speechless after listening to the project.
“It made me feel some kinda way when I left the studio,” he says during an interview with KMEL‘s Shay Diddy and Radio Reem. “Going to Dr. Dre is really like going to a doctor. You always leave better than you felt when you got there. ‘Woo,’ you feel better, just to see what he was doing and to hear it. I stopped him. I talk too much, naturally, but when he finished playing these records, I was just standing there like, (mouth closed).”
Quik, who has worked with Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Jay Z and Dr. Dre, says that Dr. Dre was the only artist he has ever fan-boyed over.
“I was talking to him and then it dawned on me,” he says. “I was high. I was smoking weed a little bit. I was just like, ‘Naw, Dre, what we need to, man Dre, I love you man. Whatever you say, we doing.'”
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Elsewhere in the interview, Quik discusses the career of his son, David Blake, Jr.
“He was one years old playing drums, played in church his whole life, and he’s level-headed,” Quik says. “That’s all I tell him, just keep your temperament ’cause this game is about highs and lows and you wanna kinda stay even-keeled. You don’t wanna get too crazy when it’s high up. You don’t wanna too depressed when it’s low. So just ride it out. Take the good with the bad and keep pushing.”
The rapper-producer says that he has had to take his own advice throughout his 20-plus-year career.
“You gotta pray,” he says. “You gotta really ask God to help you through it because a lot of it you’re not gonna understand. You don’t have the wisdom and the time to figure some of it out, so you just gotta ask God to help. If you’re not balanced, if you’re not centered in your spirituality, you won’t really go nowhere.”
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DJ Quik Evaluates Jeezy, Drake & Kendrick Lamar
When asked what artists he looks out for, Quik says that Jeezy is his favorite artist. He also names Drake and Kendrick Lamar as rappers who he sees as successful right now.
Besides Drake’s catchiness, Quik says the Toronto rapper has made a name for himself by relating to girls in an atypical manner.
“Drake is like the hottest rapper,” he says. “It’s because he do stuff that people don’t do like he talk to the girls, but he talk to them in such a way where he ain’t like trying to be Primadonna and like sell out to him. It’s real.”
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Quik also has praise for Lamar, comparing him to a prominent Rap group.
“Nobody’s beating Kendrick Lamar right now,” Quik says. “To Pimp a Butterfly is a record that you don’t feel no guilt listening to. That’s N.W.A. That’s N.W.A Jr.”
The Compton, California native discussed N.W.A‘s impact on his own career.
“I came from Eazy-E, growing up watching this dude race these fancy, really expensive sports cars and wear these crazy pieces of jewelry that nobody has and DJ Yella riding around in Lexus coupes before anybody knew what they was,” he says. “It was like you wanted to be them. Ice Cube in Rolls Royces. It was real.”
For additional DJ Quik coverage, watch the following DX Daily:
