As one of the many artists whose album never saw the light of day under legendary producer Dr. Dre, former Shady/Aftermath MC Stat Quo utilized his experiences as well as his mistakes to help parlay his once-burgeoning rap career into a more managerial role. Now he helps other artists make the creative choices that will help them sustain a longer, more prosperous career.
Stat, whose real name is Stanley Benton, stopped by #DXLive last Thursday to share some stories about the old days working with Dre and Eminem, including most recently, and most recently what he thought of Dr. Dre’s Gold-certified Compton album.
“Shit was wack. I love Dre to death but it was wack,” Stat told Trent Clark, Justin Hunte, Jake Rohn and Marcel Williams. “This how this shit work is how music goes, this is how you know your shit [is] good. 2-3 months after it come out.” He continued, “It’s not that it wasn’t put together quality wise, it’s not that it wasn’t quality beats and shit like that, it just didn’t capture the attention of the world. The only reason it got where it was was because the movie was so phenomenal. And that’s no diss. People think if you don’t like something you’re dissing it. I love Dre. He’s my everything. I helped him [with the project] but that don’t mean it’s the shit just cause I helped, you know what I’m saying, WE fucked up!”
With so much unreleased material in his vaults, Stat offered an explanation as to why and how Compton was able to be released when so much classic material remained unearthed.
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“if I cook 90 different dishes and I’m tasting each one as I make ‘em and I just set ‘em on the table so they’re sitting in front of me, when I eat I’m gonna leave some shit out cause I have so much food and I’ma get full,” Stat explained, also citing the headphone mogul’s work habits as a reason for his continual successes. “[Dre] has a relentless work ethic. He works all the time so he accumulates music all the time. He never leaves the studio without anything. When I first started working with him he told me that what Tupac would do, Tupac would come in there, lay a verse and then the hook, then he’d go to the next thing. He’d do three or four and then he’ll listen back, and then he’d perfect the one and that’s the one that he would leave with. That’s why Tupac had so much music cause every time he went to the lab he did four songs every fucking time, so Dre works just like that. This dude works as if he has nothing, as if he’s broke,” Stat revealed.
As for why his own album Statlanta never came out on Shady/Aftermath Stat places the blame squarely on himself.
“People try to blame Dre, it’s not always Dre’s fault. I was on the shelf. That was my fault cause I didn’t pick a side,” admitted Stat. “I came in there a certain kind of way then I started trying to make music to appease them instead of trying to make music to appease the people that got me in that door. I came from the underground Atlanta making a certain kind of rap. People loved me for that and then I got around Dre I started trying to make shit that sound like 50 and what they was doing. I should’ve just stayed in my lane and kept doing what I was doing and the people would have forced it out. With Kendrick, the people forced it out. They could not hold it. Game, the people forced his album out. They could not hold it. All these people I talked about picked an identity: Game’s a Blood, 50’s a gangster, Kendrick’s an intellectual. You know who the fuck they rapping to when they rap. Stat Quo was all over the place. That’s not Dre’s fault that’s my fault.”
But pissing off the biggest rapper (at the time) also will get you in the doghouse fast and Stat admits to doing just that with Marshall Mathers.
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“My album would have came out but I fucked up,” he said, revisiting the story. “There was a song called ‘Dance On It’. Em wrote the chorus and Em wanted me to say the chorus. I thought it was not good. If I would have said, ‘Yeah, that’s it! That’s the one we going with!’ I would’ve got my album out. But I tried to be on some ‘Nah, I don’t like that; that ain’t a hit.’ I was really arguing with the top-selling rapper of all-time on what a fuckin’ hit was. What a dummy idiot I was!”
He continued, “My exact quote was: ‘I’ll put it out if you stay on the hook’ and then I said, ‘Give me a million dollars and I’ll put it out.’ And when I said that, me and Eminem went like this [divides hands]. It was a wrap! He was mad as shit! And Dre was like, ‘Yo, you made him mad.’ And then like the next day, I like apologized with tears in my eyes. Because I’m watching my fuckin’ career go down the drain.”
Check out the full interview above for more stories including why he got dropped from Shady Records, some of the unreleased music he’s heard and some of his favorite stories from his time hanging around Dr. Dre.
Tune into #DXLive every Thursday from 6-9pm EST.
