Author Topic: The ultimate N.W.A family interview thread *magazine scans,reviews etc.*  (Read 29860 times)

Chad Vader

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #45 on: November 14, 2007, 10:36:38 AM »
THE D.O.C. (December 2006) | Interview By: Nima

       Dubcnn had the honor of speaking with a true pioneer and a legend in Hip-Hop this month. The D.O.C. [sat in the room next door to Dr. Dre who was going over Detox material] talked exclusively to dubcnn about what he has been up to in recent years, the eagerly anticipated Detox record and his role in the project and writing once again with Snoop Dogg. We gauged The D.O.C.'s opinion on trying to please the mainstream as well as core fans, find out what is happening with his artists including Six-Two, movie plans and even discuss...another D.O.C. record executive produced by Dr. Dre once again? All in this exclusive dubcnn interview. No one can do it better!

http://www.dubcnn.com/interviews/thedoc/
Quote

Dubcnn: Dubcnn has the fantastic opportunity to connect with a true legend of Hip-Hop, a man who helped create a lot of classic records, The D.O.C. himself. How you doing Doc?

Hey hey man! I'm cool, just kicking it, you know?


Dubcnn: It's great to hear from you man, you know that to a lot of West Coast fans, you're like the magic fairy who is needed to sprinkle its magic on to records for them to become classics. How do you feel about that?

*laughs* Haaa, aw shit, that's cool man! It's a blessing, absolutely. I tell them all the time, it's not a D.O.C. thang, it's a G.O.D. thang!


Dubcnn: You have discussed your past many many times, so before we get to that, let's start it off by talking about the present time. You told me you've been in the studio with Dr. Dre?

Yeah, Dre is in the other room right now, making some beats.


Dubcnn: So ya'll working on Detox?

Yes sir! I'm trying to get this muthafucka done by the summertime. I need it to be out in the summertime, I need that badly in my life.


Dubcnn: So what is "Detox" really?

I can't tell you that. That's classified. *laughs*


Dubcnn: People are expecting a mind-blowing record,do you think the pressure makes it hard to put out a record, fearing a flop?


Nah man, if you love the shit, you're gonna make great shit. And I love the shit. I love great sounding rap records. I love great rap songs. So that's what I try to make.


Dubcnn: How much has been recorded already?

Can't tell you!


Dubcnn: Ya'll ain't letting nothing out the bag, huh?

Nope!


Dubcnn: People were expecting it to drop this year, cause he waited seven years to drop 2001, but I guess not...

The key is 007! It's always a 7 in it. You got part of it! But it's about 007.


Dubcnn: Do you think it's going to be comparable to the first two Chronics, as far as having West Coast guests on it and everything?

I can't tell you!!! All I can tell you is that it ain't what you expect, so don't expect nothing. But, it's some crazy shit, and I love it.


Dubcnn: How is it working with Dre in the studio, compared to back in the day?

It really hasn't changed. As a matter of fact, right now it's more like it was in the beginning. He's really able to concentrate on making these drums work, and I sit in there and try to concentrate on making these words work.


Dubcnn: What do you think of Bishop Lamont? Have you worked with him yet?

I haven't had a chance to work with him, but Lamont is something else. He's bananas. He's one of the young gorillas around here.


Dubcnn: Do you think he has it in him, to become the new star of Dr. Dre, similar to Snoop and Game blowing up?

I think Dre could make you a star. If that's what he wanted to do. All that is Dr. Dre. It all starts with that cat. If you are half way alright, if he's touching you, you're going to be great. And if you're great, and he touches you, then you're supposed to be super-human. But that's only if you can listen. Cause the guy is something else.


Dubcnn: Dre has been criticized a lot, producers talking about he stole work from them, or put his name on stuff. You're right there in the studio with him, so maybe you can clear that up!

Yeah! It's just drama. That's all it is. I see what this guy does with those buttons. Anybody should be happy to be affiliated with this dude, because it's something really different about his ear and shit. The truth is... Uh nah I'm not even allowed to tell you that. It's something else though. The guy is crazy.


Dubcnn: Sounds like ya'll have been going in a piano direction, judging from the tracks on Jay-Z and Snoop's record.

He makes beats all day long, and whatever song comes up, came up. We just try to make great songs. When it comes to the people and stuff, ain't really no masterplan to it, just trying to fit them to good music.


Dubcnn: Snoop told me he worked with you for his Blue Carpet Treatment, on "That's That Shit". Tell us about that.

"That's That Shit", "Round Here", "Boss Life" and "Imagine". Those are my pieces on Snoopy's record.


Dubcnn: Tell us about working with Snoop on his new album.

It's just love! It's me, Snoop and Dre getting back in the studio having fun. I'm just trying to put some love on my nigga's record because that's the love that we had back in the day. It's easier for me to write for Snoop than it is for anybody else, because that was some shit that we developed
together when he was a kid! I know him in and out!


Dubcnn: We know you used to coach Snoop Dogg write songs back in the day, how is it sitting next to Snoop in 2006, compared to back then?

Come on man, Snoop! I love Snoop exactly the same as I did back then. He was a star then. Before anybody else knew it, I knew it. I love him the same way now, he's a star now. It's all love on mine when it comes to him. We are the same, me and him.


Dubcnn: What about you, how different is D.O.C. now?

Not a whole lot different. Maybe a whole lot wiser. Maybe a lot more humble and appreciative of the opportunities that a muthafucka gets to have. It's a cold game, and it's easy to get swallowed up in bullshit, shit you could never make it out of. But your boy made it through and I'm right back in the
same spot I was 20 years ago, but with a whole lot more sense, and my skill sense is still bananas! *laughs*


Dubcnn: How do you think the game has changed? It's hard to please everybody, you have all the old school fans, and at the same time you have to please the young crowd and the mainstream crowd. How hard is that?

Aw man, it's all good songs. None of that shit really matters. It takes a great song. You know a great song when you hear one, everybody does. So if that's what you thrive to make, then you really can't miss! I don't give a fuck if it's a 20 year old or a 40 year old! It's all the same shit to me anyway! I thrive to be the best, that way I can't loose. A lot of the shit is so ughhh, but it is, what it is. And if you're young and you're black, and this music is affording you the opportunity to make money, I say make your money! But not that I listen to a lot of the stuff out here man.


Dubcnn: The way you're saying it, it sounds like when you hear a good song, you hear a good song. But, I don't believe that skill is all that matters no more. You have all these artists that make good songs, good music, that can't get no radio play, no play whatsoever.

Yeah, well you know, that's a part of the game too, kid! It always has been! It didn't just show up. It has always been like that, that shit goes all the way back to fuckin' Gladys Knight and the Pits probably. It is what it is. You have to work with that in this system, and try to accomplish whatever goal it is, that you set for yourself. You can't expect to change this system from the outside, unless you are the coldest muthafucka that ever rapped. And I ain't heard him yet! I probably am him, and they took my voice so I couldn't talk shit! I understand exactly what you're saying, but I don't believe you can fight that war from outside. It's gonna have to be a cold ass rapper to say that shit and muthafuckas got to play it anyway. He doesn't exist anymore, cause they took my vocal chords, kid! But if they give it back, I got you!


Dubcnn: You still managed to make your mark in the game, even without your voice! You used your talent in another way.

Man, it's all God's gift. It's what he allowed me to do. If this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now, that's why that happened.


Dubcnn: Do you still sometimes think back, like "What if that didn't happen? Now I would be sitting right there next Snoop and Dre on TV doing all the shit?"

No, no. It's probably more likely that if I wouldn't have lost my voice, I
probably would be dead by now, kid!


Dubcnn: You were too wild?

Yeah yeah, it was too much. We was too young.


Dubcnn: Doing too much?

Tooooo much! I think we're going to do a movie about this shit in a minute. So you'll get to see it, it's gonna be bananas. We're talking about it.


Dubcnn: What's up with your artist, Six-Two? Is he still around? You were pushing him hard for a while.

Six-Two is in Texas. I had to take a break from Silverback for a minute to concentrate on my ties to the West Coast. I had to build my shit back up, so I can do what I do back at the crib. But I came through for Silverback. But right now, I gotta be in L.A. where it's kinda popping. But I can't be up
here with all them niggas! I ain't got it like that yet!


Dubcnn: What about Up-Tight?

Both of them guys are around man, and both of those guys are solid!


Dubcnn: Six-Two had some good story telling tracks on the Deuce album!

Come on man! He is the truth! He is the truth!


Dubcnn: Didn't he have a solo record out there?

Who, Sixty-Double? Just featured on a lot of other shit, he ain't have a solo record yet.


Dubcnn: I think there was an album out, something called "Mac-A-Roni & G'z?"

That's like a mixtape. "Mac-A-Roni & G'z". *laughs* Yep man!


Dubcnn: How do you feel about your album "Deuce", looking back to it a few years later?

You know what, that's the first record I ever did myself, without nobody. I was trying to prove a point so bad, that I went one way when I maybe should have went another way. Today I might do it a lot differently, but it is what it is. I appreciate the opportunity.


Dubcnn: Your debut "No One Can Do It Better" is still praised as one of the classics in Hip-Hop, when is the last time you listened to that record?

Aw man, it's been a minute.


Dubcnn: You should pop it back in!

*laughs* I'm trying to build this new shit. I don't wanna get stuck trying to get off into that old shit, cause at one point in the game, I tried to go back to some of those flows that I used before, and it just don't work with this voice. You gotta be able to push that shit out.


Dubcnn: Do you wish you would have gotten more credit for the work and helping you did in the early Death Row days?

You know what? Of course. A man wants to be acknowledged for the work he does. But I don't know if everybody is supposed to get it all the time. When it's my turn to get it, you can believe I'ma get it. But that always fucked me up back then, not so much now, but it did back then.


Dubcnn: Do you still maintain a relationship to Suge Knight?

Naw, naw. It ain't really no reason to. But I don't not acknowledge the cat. He's gotta make ends too, so god bless him and that's what that is, but I really can't deal with him.


Dubcnn: Have you ever thought about writing a book about your whole life?

That's where this movie thang came from.


Dubcnn: Cause I know there was this book by Ronin Ro called "Have Gun, Will Travel", but I heard a lot of the shit in there was false and everything, so..

Oh, oh! *laughs* There was some crazy shit going on, I remember all that shit! But I'ma get them, you can believe that. But I wanna do it right, none of this is ever about money, for me. It's always about the art. So when I tell this story, I'ma move mountains with this muthafucka. It's not just to
be doing something.


Dubcnn: Aftermath artist G.A.G.E. said in an interview, that you were working on a solo album called "Voice Threw Hot Vessels". Is that true?

*silence* Uhhh... yeah.


Dubcnn: You ain't trying to tell me?

You know what, I don't wanna get too deep off into it, because it's so early. Right now Dr. Dre's "Detox" is the most important on my mind. But there is an idea in the back, and that was the title so far.


Dubcnn: That's all we're getting right now, huh.

Yeah. But don't count me out, kid! He might have one more classic in him!


Dubcnn: Shit, why not? You already have one under your belt.

*laughs* Thank you, pimpin'.


Dubcnn: You have a strong ear for talent, who are D.O.C.'s favorite up and coming artists in the rap game right now? Who are you routing for?

Six-Two and Up-Tight. Who else... Pretty Black from Dallas, Cadillac Seville... You know, we don't listen to anybody new, when we're in the field. It's not good. My daughter loves them all though, my daughter loves Lil Wayne, and Bow Wow, she loves them all. But D.O.C., he don't know.


Dubcnn: So what's D.O.C. listening to? Just your own shit?

D.O.C. is listening to these beats that Dre is making in here, trying to build some Detox shit.


Dubcnn: You should sneak some of those beats out and let us hear them!

Can't do it!


Dubcnn: I heard that Dre got this machine in the studio, where he just be shredding all the CD's he don't like!

Absolutely, right there.


Dubcnn: Why do that, though? I'm sure he's got beats that he's not happy with that he could easily slang to up and coming artists who would appreciate them.

I know, dogg! I be thinking the same thing! Cause he just makes them all day, he spits them out! But it's his art, I can't tell him what to do with his shit. I don't even try, cause it won't work!


Dubcnn: Do you think that a problem with well known artists is that they're often surrounded by yes-men, and rarely get an honest opinion about their music?

That may be. But sometimes, a person can get so good, that they forget that they're not always good. They might be getting the right information, but not hear it. It's all kinds of shit, and it's all subjective. It's really all opinion. Nobody can say for certain, one way or the other. That's why I
say if you're black, and you're making some money, I'm glad you're doing it.


Dubcnn: In Hip-Hop, it seems like we got that first album curse, to where the first album is your best one, most of the time.

Yeah. Because it's hard to love it. It's easy to love the money, but it's hard to love the shit that we do, because sometimes it's thankless, and trust me when I tell you that. I do it because I love it, and muthafuckas ain't been thanking me the whole time. But I do it because this is what I do, nigga.


Dubcnn: So for 2007, D.O.C.'s plans are Detox and then after that we might get the solo?

Yeah, as soon as we get through "Detox", I'm gonna do it. Dr. Dre executive producing the album, D.O.C... Oh my god! He named it! Which is why the name is out! But it's all good, you can call the muthafucka whatever you want! I just wanna do one over your drums.


Dubcnn: Okay man, I think we've cornered pretty much all aspects, do you have any last words for the fans?

Nah man, I'm just here, and I ain't going no where. If you love the shit, love the shit. For real. And I love the fact that the Cowboys will be in Miami this year, kickin' the shit out of somebody from the AFC's ass in the Superbowl. I love that.

 

Tha Psycho Hustla

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #46 on: November 14, 2007, 11:36:35 AM »
dope ass thread.
 

Chad Vader

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #47 on: November 14, 2007, 11:42:00 AM »
www.thaformula.com interview with the D.O.C


Quote
[Q & A W/ the D.O.C.: from ruthless to death row
feedback: info@thaformula.com
2004


ThaFormula.com - First off, I just wanna say that this is an honor, and that in my opinion if it weren't for your tragic accident, you would have been the greatest MC of all time...

D.O.C. - Now wait a minute, what's up with this would have been shit? Don't count me out like that!

ThaFormula.com - Nah man, I'm sayin' at this point in time I feel you would have been the best and I say that only because you and Dre were one of the greatest combinations of all time...

D.O.C. - Ok, well thank you brother, and you know what I think man? I think you are exactly right, and I don't mean any disrespect to nobody, but I think you are absolutely, exactly right, and when I say don't count me out yet, don't let it be because my voice is gone that that takes that marquee away from my name.  We still working on me being the greatest of all time. It just may take a little while.

ThaFormula.com - I always thought that you wrote a lot of the material from the early Death Row days. Did you have a lot of input when it came to that?

D.O.C. - Well what I did was the same thing I do with these young guys now, which is that I don't persay write the shit, but I don't allow them to write bullshit. I listen with a loving ear, that means I want you to be the shit and everything less just ain't civilized.

ThaFormula.com - I always tell people that I felt the biggest tragedy in hip-hop, was the day you got in that accident and lost your voice. Hip-hop was robbed of what would have been one of, if not the greatest MC of all time?

D.O.C. - Well god works in his own time and he works in mysterious ways, so it must have been meant for me not to say nothing for these ten years, but for some reason I feel like talkin' now.  So I'm ready to talk, and I can rap a little bit. It may not be what it once was but these words still sting pretty heavily.  Although the vocal power ain't what it once was, it's still a lot of power in this raspy voice I got.

ThaFormula.com - I'd like to start from the beginning Doc, let's go back to the early years and let all those that don't know, exactly how it all started?

D.O.C. - Well N.W.A. hadn't really got together yet.  At least the group that the world knows as N.W.A. hadn't really all come together yet. When I got there everybody started finding there places. Everybody had their own individual skills, but Cube belonged to another group called C.I.A. at the time. Eazy was doing his own records at that time. Dre was just a producer, Ren was around and Dre worked with Yella.  There was another dude around called Arabian Prince. All those guys was working with each other. Everybody was doing they own shit, but they all worked together.  By the time I got there, guys really started taking that shit serious and they stopped fucking with Arabian Prince. Cube came from C.I.A. and left his other group alone. That's when we started doing work all together, but N.W.A. hadn't even really started working on it's material. We all spent all our time trying to put Eazy's record together.

ThaFormula.com - What did you do for the Eazy-E album "Eazy Duz It?"

D.O.C.- I wrote about maybe 30 or 40 percent of that record.  I wrote "Still Talkin Shit," I wrote "We Want Eazy," and more.

ThaFormula.com - You came from the South, how did you and Dre hook up?

D.O.C. - Well there was this dude named Dr. Rock who used to DJ with Dre at a club called the "Eve After Dark."  Well, Dre came down to visit this dude Dr. Rock because Dr. Rock had moved from Compton and came down here and got a gig on the radio. Well, when this rap shit started happening, Rock tried to put him a group together.  I was in the group Fila Fresh Crew.  Dre  came down and was visiting with this dude and ended up doing some beats at this dudes crib for us, and once me and Dre started coming together, dude was like "nigga you the shit," "If you come out to the West Coast, I guarantee you we will be rich." Well later on I found out this dude Rock was taking money, so I gave Dre a call.  To me it was all about the music. I've never been a really a street kind of dude.  I'm more of a thinker.

ThaFormula.com - And at that time it was all about the music and nobody was really thinkin' about being rich were they?

D.O.C. - Shit nah.  I think what Dre saw was my ability to help him make great records. Making a hit song for Eazy-E wasn't the easiest thing in the world. Eazy didn't have any rhythm, so it was hard to cross and besides I think Dre wanted to cross over his music so he could get it played on the radio. At that time they wasn't playin that gangsta shit on the radio. They wasn't trying to hear that, but if I could write songs for Eric that were gangsta, but not "gangsta," uh , I could have Eazy talkin' about all the gangsta shit in the world, but use words that don't scare white people. That's really all it was.

ThaFormula.com - Looking back, you had a hell of a vocabulary for coming out of a gangsta rap camp like N.W.A.?

D.O.C. - Sure, but I was a reader. I was always a reader as a young kid. I was never outside in the streets sellin' this doing that. I used to read books, that's what I did. I actually read books so that I could trick my parents into thinkin' that I was going to school and shit. But once I got to the West Coast, it was just such a thrill to be in California.  I had been to L.A. as a kid or young child, but as an adult I had never been to L.A., so my vibe was so great I was putting songs together in fuckin' 5 minutes back then. I can't remember one rap I wrote that Eazy didn't love, and muthafuckas in L.A. from Dre's relatives to Eazy's relatives to Cube's friends didn't love. Muthafuckas were like, "Doc you the shit!"  Once they came in like that it was hard for me to come back to Texas because Texas never showed me that kind of love, but from the time I got off the plane in California, them muthafuckas was like, "nigga you the shit."

ThaFormula.com - What happened after that?

D.O.C. - Well I was just a part of the team at that time.  See, to me there was no difference between Eazy-E, N.W.A. or D.O.C. There was just titles that you put on a record. Like in my heart of hearts, you can't have an N.W.A. record without me, but anytime you see anything about N.W.A. in magazines they will never mention my name, but I was a pivotal part of that scene.

ThaFormula.com - You had the dopest intro on the "Straight Outta Compton" LP, which was for the track "Parental Discretion is Advised." What type of input other than track that did you have on that album?

D.O.C. - Well whenever you heard Eazy rappin', that was me, and then I stuck my own shit in like when Dre was doing the court room shit before "Fuck the Police," I was in there at the end. But to me it was more about making Eazy sound like he the shit. That was my job, and I took that shit serious. After the N.W.A. record it was just my turn.

ThaFormula.com - Was there a problem with that? I always wondered if that wasn't one of the reasons that Cube left, other then money?

D.O.C. - Nah, Cube just had problems with Eazy and the money, and Jerry Heller was really Eazy's downfall in the business world.

ThaFormula.com - Was Jerry Heller really as bad as they made him out to be?

D.O.C. - Well I don't know if he was as bad as muthafuckas claim, but he was just a Jewish guy that was in a position of power as far as Eazy was concerned.  Eazy still had to sign the paper.  He still had to sign the check, but Jerry would convince this guy that this is the best move or that it is the best move, no matter what any of us said, Eazy was gonna do what the fuck Jerry said because he felt that the guy was right. He had taken him from just makin' money on the street doing what he was doing, to being a serious businessman and making great music. I mean he wasn't really controlling shit, but he was in Eazy's ear so tuff and Eazy had so much faith in him that I guess you could really say that to a certain extent, yeah he was. He had a lot of control over Ruthless, a lot more then any of us had. So when you think about when the money started coming and I'm sure it was more money and faster then Eazy had ever made working on the streets, but Eazy chose not to share it with those guys the way they wanted it to be shared. The way they wanted to be compensated for their hard work. So instead of this dude saying "well let me take a step back and try and fix this shit because this is my business," he took the street stance of, "nigga this is my shit, fuck you," "you can beat it if you want to." So that's what the fuck Cube did.

ThaFormula.com - Did this problem start before or after your album was gonna drop?

D.O.C. - Yeah, the problem happened before we even got off into my record.

ThaFormula.com - So when did the decision to do your record come?

D.O.C. - It was just a natural process. We'll do Eazy's then well do N.W.A.'s, then I'm next.

ThaFormula.com - Why wasn't Cube next, because it always seemed like he would be the next one with the solo album?

D.O.C. - Well, N.W.A. had music out. I don't think Cube was really trippin' on a solo album at that time. He wasn't sayin, "I want an Ice Cube record." He wasn't trippin' like that. He was happy in N.W.A. He just wasnt getting paid.

ThaFormula.com - Now I wanna speak on a rumor that has been going around for years. Is it true that you sold your publishing for a...

D.O.C. - for a watch and a gold chain?

ThaFormula.com - Yeah, was that true?

D.O.C. - Sure it was. I mean I didn't know what I was doing. I was a fucking 19-year-old kid. I didn't know shit about no fucking publishing and this and that.

ThaFormula.com - Did you sell it to Eazy or Jerry?

D.O.C. - I sold it to Eazy.  He took advantage.

ThaFormula.com - Do you think that he did that, or do you think that Jerry Heller was behind that?

D.O.C. - Nah, I think Eazy did that.  Eazy was always a money-hungry muthafucka. Eazy was a greedy one, and I was a perfect match for him because I'm a giving person.  Money don't mean nothing to me because I make great music.  Its in my heart and you can't keep that shit down forever.  I kept saying to myself, one day it will be my turn.

ThaFormula.com - So now comes your album. What I want to know is how was it recording "No One Can Do It Better" because that was the only album that I can remember where Dre produced it all by himself, without the help of any other co-producer or whatever. It was just you and Dre. This is the album I always tell people to explain to me when they say Dre can't produce by himself or that he jacks everybody's beats. There was no one to jack for your album right?

D.O.C. - Well, let me explain something to you and you can print this so your people will understand. I went through this shit with Daz and now they're going through this shit with Mel-Man. Let me tell you something. What Dr. Dre gives those young men, they can't give you enough money for, what that guy gives these young producers that are trying to come up. The only reason Dre even has anybody else in there fucking with him is because he's lazy. That's the only reason. When Dre is in the studio, that shit is coming out of his mind and none of these other guys are responsible for it and I was there from day 1, 'till fuckin' '94 or '95 when I had to leave. Then I came back because doing records with Dre is like going to school, because if you sit and you watch, and you look and you learn, the guy is teaching you how to make great records. Now with this new record I made, I'm only doing what Dre would have did, and I used my own judgment.  The one thing that Dr. Dre is missing now is D.O.C. and that's the same way that I would tell those young guys, hey that sucks!  I would tell Dre's big ass the same shit. Hey, I love you, and your the greatest of all time, but that's bullshit!

ThaFormula.com - So at this point in time there is nobody in there to tell him, "Hey Dre, I don't know about that beat right there?"

D.O.C. - That's right. Number one, there is nobody there that I think, and this is just my own personal humble opinion, there's nobody there that I think knows the difference between a hit record, or not, and even if they knew, they're going to get paid so they're not gonna tell him. Me, I never gave a fuck. You muthafuckas ain't payin' me anyway, so I might as well tell you your shit stinks.

ThaFormula.com - Now let's get back to your first album Doc, what was it like recording that album?

D.O.C. - Just fun man. That's the only word I got for that. The shit was so much fun because at that time when I moved to California, I moved at Dr. Dre's urging. Once I got there I had to stay with this dudes brother by Centenial High School for like a month or 2, and then Dre got his own apartment. Him and Yella got an apartment, so I spent all day everyday with Dre for those first 3 or 4 years, I was with this guy all day everyday. We slept in the same house, we ate at the same time.  We drove to work together in the same beat up little Toyota Corrolla.  It was the closest thing that you could have to a brother because we fought and argued like family. That's the kind of person I am. I'm a real southern kind of person, so if I have love for you and if something's in my heart, then I'm gonna express myself. There ain't no gangsta shit. I don't wanna beat yo ass, I don't wanna shoot you in your ass, or none of that shit. I just want you to think about what I'm sayin' and try to do right. At the same time, show business was around us and everybody was just blowin' up in they're own way, and you know how show business can really get muthafuckas' heads fucked up.

ThaFormula.com - Did every song recorded for "No One Can Do It Better" make that album?

D.O.C. - Yep, every song, and the "No One Can Do It Better" album was just me being me, and Dre being Dre. We had no plans. We just had fun and did the shit, and when we felt like we had enough, we quit. "How many is that?," "17?," "Yeah that's enough, fuck it, let's move on." He was ready to get back into N.W.A. mode.

ThaFormula.com - What made you do the track, "Beautiful But Deadly" and go down that avenue?

D.O.C. - Oh, that was Dr. Dre's idea. Traditionally I'm a East Coast rapper, so he felt what Run and them was doing back then, uh, well we felt that I could do that kind of thing. Crossover into a Rock n' Roll kind of  theme and not reaqlly skip a beat or lose any of my hardcore audience doing it. Because of the type of rapper that I was.  But it really wasn't straight Rock n' Roll because that's a old parliament song, and Dre is a  Parliament freak.

ThaFormula.com - What was your favorite song off that album?

D.O.C. - As a young man, my favorite song was "Doc and the Doctor," because I used to love to be able to holla and do my Run DMC imitation. My favorite song now is "Tha Formula."

ThaFormula.com - Likewise, which is why we named the site "thaformula.com," because what you were spittin' on that track was the truth, and pretty much summed up the formula to making real hip-hop?

D.O.C. - Now I will tell you how that song came about.  It's a funny story. Dr. Dre and Michel'Le went somewhere and they didn't make it back home till about 1:30 or maybe 2 o'clock in the morning. Now me I'm straight outta Texas.  I ain't got a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of, so when they go out I'm just at the house on the floor. Well I was sleepin' when he came back in, and he said, "nigga, I was on my way home and I got caught up in a day dream, it was me and you was bustin' a song called "Tha Formula" to a Marvin Gaye beat!" He went in there and he got a tape and he played me the Marvin Gaye song and he went in there and went to sleep. Well me, I stayed up from about 2 o'clock till about 5:30 maybe finishing that song and we did that song the next day. That's what I mean, me and Dre were really in sync. Like I go good with his ear. Not just his beats, I can hear the kind of shit that he hears, but still I'm able to hear my own shit in it.

ThaFormula.com - Well, I never heard anyone flow over a Dre beat the way you did on "Tha Formula" and I really don't think anyone ever will.

D.O.C. - Well I remember Mel-Man telling me one time that he asked Dre who was the best  to rap on top of his beats and Mel-Man told me that Dre said it was me, and I can pretty much believe that because I am one of  the few muthafckas' that loved, and I don't mean I like it as in when I hear it I wanna dance, but I loved Dr. Dre's  production. So that means when it stinks we need to fix it, because I love it. Not in the terms where it's something that I like, but it's something that I want to be great and I wanted him to be great. I always wanted Dre to be Quincy Jones. At least in this hip-hop thing, I wanted him to be Russell Simmons. I didn't want him to just be satisfied with being Dr. Dre, hit maker or beat maker. The guy has the potential to be huge in this world. I mean he's a smart guy with a good heart, and I think he's got the best ears in the business today.

ThaFormula.com - How about "It's Funky Enough?" That was a different type track at that time. No one had really done anything like that in hip-hop at that time?

D.O.C. - Well that was me sittin' at the turntable listening to a song called "Misdemeanor" by The Silvers, and I loved it. It was a funky little thing. It was the shit, but Dr. Dre said there is nothing I can sample. I'm not fucking with it. A couple of days later I'm back in the studio and I pull that muthafucka back out and I'm listening to it, and I ask him again. He said, there is not enough space or some shit, and that he can't sample the record so he can't use it. I let it go again. Well we came back in there, and I think it was like a week later, and I got the record and I was playing with it, and I had to beg this guy to make the fuckin' beat. He says "okay fuck it, I'll make it." He put the shit down and I was gonna write another rap to it, but the way he was clowning me behind it I said, "fuck it, Ill just put this rap that I got on it, then we can work it out if it ain't right." I had been drinkin' some beer, and smokin' some weed with Laylaw on the other side of the studio. So that when I got back inside the studio I was feelin' kind of good and the beat sounded like some Jamaican shit to me after Dre finished fucking with it. That was the reason why I rapped it the way that I rapped it, because it wasn't designed to be like that. I did that muthafuckin' song one time through, thinkin' that we were gonna go back and do it over again, and Dre was like "fuck that, that was a one take willy."

ThaFormula.com - Why do you think that doesn't happen any more man?

D.O.C. - I don't know man, but I seen it with Snoop. Snoop's was a one take willy, but his shit was all freestyle. He hadn't written nothing down. He just came in and started busitin'.

ThaFormula.com - Wait a minute...what track are you talkin' about?

D.O.C. - The song was "The Shiznit".

ThaFormula.com - That was all freestyle?

D.O.C. - Yep. The guy came in and he started bustin' and then when we got to the break, Dre cut the machine off, did the chorus and told Snoop to come back in. He did that throughout the record. That's when Snoop was in the zone then.

ThaFormula.com - What happened to that Snoop?

D.O.C. - Show business man. Once you make it to the top, it's very hard unless you got people around you like me who are gonna tell you when you suck. That's the key. I don't want this to sound fucked up man, but nigga I'm the key. I am the key. I don't make beats and I don't really write raps for muthafuckas' no more, but I can tell you this. When it comes to making classic records, I was the key to that shit there.

ThaFormula.com - It was nice to see you, Dre, and Snoop together in the "Still Dre" video and at The Up In Smoke tour, because it just brought back a lot of memories?

D.O.C. - Well when you get this new album, "Deuce" there is a little piece by Snoop Dogg where he basically says the same thing you said. He says, if it wasn't for me, there wouldn't have been no Snoop. He said he got as good as he got because we wrote together and I criticized his shit and made him change this and change that. So really the shit that you feel, there is a lot of truth in it, and in a minute everybody is gonna know it, but my concern now is Six-Too, El Dorado, and Uptite. Those are my young soldiers down here, and Snoop Dogg is one of the great ones of all time. He used to hold the spot that Six-Too is coming for.

ThaFormula.com - No doubt, Six-Too has an incredible amount of talent. How do you look back at the Ruthless and Death Row days, because to a lot of people think those were the some of the greatest times in hip-hop?

D.O.C. - Those were seven of the most violent years of my life. I ain't lying to you either nigga. I seen and did cause I told you when I was a younger guy I was kind of church kid you know. I had never really been involved in that shit, and those, uh, man! I could remember one time in Hollywood at Snoop's apartment. Daz and Nate Dogg are downstairs about to get into it with some niggaz, and Daz yells upstairs for me to come down and to bring my shit. Because at that time I was packin' a gun, knowin' I'm not fittin' to shoot nobody, but I'm still packin' it because Suge gave it to me, we was close back then. So he told me to come downstairs with my girlfriend. I came down there and you have to picture this because it's the funniest shit you will ever wanna see. I'm downstairs with a gun in my waist trying to break up a fight? Whew! That was some backward shit man! But that's life and I wouldn't change none of that shit.

ThaFormula.com - Did you see everything coming as far as the break up of N.W.A. and everyone heading their separate ways after your album dropped?

D.O.C. - Hell nah! Back in those days, uh, see I was in L.A. because of Dre. Now they never reported this and nobody ever says this, but Dre didn't leave Ruthless because Suge went and found him and showed him some funny shit in his contract, he left Ruthless because I asked him to. He left Ruthless because I wanted us to go and make our own label. Mine and his because we were the ones putting in all the work.

ThaFormula.com - And at that time Suge was your bodyguard right?

D.O.C. - Well at that time Suge was a friend of mine and they said the guy was my bodyguard because I got a 300 pound plus muthafucka following me around. But I never paid this guy to fuckin' watch over me. He probably just smelled money like everybody else and was kickin' it.

ThaFormula.com - So you asked him to leave and you guys were supposed to start your own label right?

D.O.C. - That's what it was all about and Suge had a lot to do with it because I was trying to start a label with Suge Knight. I had an office in Beverly Hills, but I was going through issues after that car wreck. I was trying to find myself and we felt like we needed Dre in order to make that shit work.

ThaFormula.com - How bad did it get for you after that accident when you found out your voice was damaged like that?

D.O.C. - Well you know what's funny dog? I probably really couldn't answer that question because it took ten years for me to even be able to admit that that shit caused me pain. I wouldn't have admitted it to anybody. I was like "ahh we'll just keep it going. That's what I was saying in my mind, but my heart must have been going through some shit.

ThaFormula.com - I still remember the day I heard about your accident. I remember hoping it was just a rumor and then I remember sittin' at home and watching your new video for "Mind Blowin" and thinking to myself saying, "I know it's just a rumor." Because in that video you looked good and it didn't look like anything had happened to you. Plus the fact that you made that video after your accident and that it was a remix.

D.O.C.- But that was the tripped out part though, because in the "Mind Blowin" video I was trying to show muthafuckas that that's what happened. In that particular video I was supposed to have had a crash and they had me on a gurney, then my spirit came out and then it went back in and said, "Nah you can kick it." In laymen's terms to me, that's what happened. I was close to death and I made it. So after the accident Jerry Heller, Eazy and them all thought I should keep going. "Whatever you do, don't stop making records." They thought I should make another one. Well I asked Dre what he thought, and he said that if it was him, he wouldn't make another record. He said they think your the king right now and that's how I would go out. I had so much faith in Dre, that when Dre said that then that was it. There was no more rappin' for me. Now I'm gonna use my writing ability to help us be the shit because that's really what I always wanted. It wasn't about no money to me. I just wanted to be the greatest. I wasn't trying to get rich out there with these guys, even though I did. I mean I wanted the fame and the fortune and all that, but I wanted when muthafuckas said my name, I wanted it to be unequivocal that this guy D.O.C. is the greatest. Now I'm a lot more humble and ill be happy with "he may be the greatest of all time." (Laughs)

ThaFormula.com - Sometimes we sit around and think about what you and Dre would have come out with after "No One Can Do It Better" if it weren't for that damn accident...

D.O.C. - Ahh man, that would have been the shit! It would have been the shit, but I would have had to probably fight with Dre a lot because I don't think he was really interested in the direction that I wanted to go in. He was only interested in making party songs that muthafuckas wanna get drunk and dance to.

ThaFormula.com - What were you trying to get into?

D.O.C. - Well like I said, I used to be a church kid. Like when you get this record, you will feel it. It's god in my record and its a gang of nigga shit. It's a gang of old N.W.A. shit. When muthafuckas hear this record, their first comment is that they knew I was where all of the old N.W.A. shit came from. That's everybody's first word. So it's dirty in that sense, but there are bits and pieces where I'm rappin' myself for like little soliloquies and it's a trip. It will make you cry, it will make you laugh, it will make you mad, it will make you wanna drive fast and then it will make you wanna get drunk. This album is a trip.

ThaFormula.com - When you guys recorded the "Straight Outta Compton" LP, did you guys record any more tracks then what was laid down?

D.O.C. - Nah, there were other tracks of N.W.A. There was actually one more D.O.C. song called "Bridget" that i think came out a little later. There were more N.W.A. songs, but they sucked.

ThaFormula.com - Do you think those songs would still sound bad today?

D.O.C. - Sure they would. They sucked then, they would suck now. Either the song is good or it's not. There is really no two ways about it. I'll tell you the mistake that a lot of these people in the rap business make today. They think because they got Snoop, DJ Quik, Ice Cube, and Mack 10 on a song that that song is the shit. Well guess what. If one of those guys raps sounds like shit and the idea of the song sucks, then your gonna have a wack ass song. I wouldn't give a fuck who was on it. Now that was my job and I held my nuts and I stuck them to the plate because I knew that these muthafuckas had so much respect for me that when I said it they wouldn't say shit to me.

ThaFormula.com - Well if anybody could say it, it was you.

D.O.C. - I was one of the muthafuckas that set the blueprint. That's what it was, and if you work with one of the muthafuckas that built the mouse trap then you can't come in there trying to build some shit tellin' me it's right when I'm tellin' you it's wrong.

ThaFormula.com - So did you know Snoop would be the next big thing after N.W.A. and you?

D.O.C. - Shit, it took me about 5 minutes. When Snoop came in, he was great. He had all the tools in him to be what he is right now, but he didn't have the desire and nobody was there to push him. That was my job. You have to be able to communicate with everybody, not just muthafuckas in Long Beach, and not just muthafuckas in L.A. So that means your subject matter may have to switch, your wordplay may have to change a little bit. You know just give us all something that we can love on.

ThaFormula.com - So how did it happen Doc, to where you had no involvement in Death Row business wise?

D.O.C. - Shortly after I had that accident, I started fucking with drugs. That's when I first started doing ecstasy. That was way back in '89. I started trying other things and it got to be a way for me to escape that pain. The white people at the top in the big offices, the ones with all the money, they were really only interested in Dre and Snoop. That shit got to be sort of painful even though they needed me to come and sign papers to get things done. It just started to feel like I was slippin', so I started getting more fucked up. I still seemed to make it to the muthafuckin' studio everyday and put my work in, but the more I fell, the more I slipped into that hole. These other guys, the more they started to rise up, nobody reached down to pick me up you know.

ThaFormula.com - The way you would have reached down and picked them up?

D.O.C. - Sure and it's funny because that's the way me and Six-Too ended up hookin' up. He was out there in the world fuckin' up. I'm not gonna speak on what the fuck he was doing, but I was fuckin' up and I saw in him the world. This guy could have the world if he wanted it.

ThaFormula.com - I feel you on that, I really wish he would of had a bigger part in the Chronic 2001 album?

D.O.C. - Well, and there in you will come up with another one of Hollywood's or the music businesses big downfall. They knew what you knew. What you know about this guy Six-Too, they knew it too. So to have him too much is to take the shine away from other muthafuckas who needed it. Which was any of the muthafuckas on that record god dammit! I wouldn't give a fuck who it was.

ThaFormula.com - Personally I would have loved to have heard more Six-Too. In fact, I think Six-Too and Devin are the most impressive MC's I have heard come out of the South in years.

D.O.C. - You god damn right and I'll tell you why. Because you're going through almost 13 years of what we been doing. That shit is old soup. You can't come tell me you gonna kill a muthafucka no more and shock me! Let me say that 99.9% of these guys even though they think the shit that they saying is coming from them personally and is different from anybody else, it's not true. It all sounds the same. It all sounds like I smoke a gang of weed, I fuck hoes, I'm the shit, and I'll bust you in yo ass. Now Six-Too man, it's hard to put a thumb on this dude man because he's unorthodox with his delivery. I guess if you had to put BB King and Snoop Dogg together and mash out a little kid, it would sound like Six-Too. Anyway, after we all came together and started this Death Row shit, I started sinkin' and they started rising. I started losing control, and they started going to meetings without me. I got to give these guys credit to say that they had enough respect for me to where they thought that I was in complete control and knew what I was doing. I fucked up a lot of Dr. Dre's parties and business meetings that I would go to fucked up and nobody still wouldn't say shit to me. They wouldn't say, "Hey Doc, you can't do this or take this muthafucka home. None of that shit. I'd be the only muthafucka in there drunk, "walkin' around with a sawed off shot gun and no shirt on." Threatening everybody and would nobody say shit to me man. So I'm just out there and I can understand to a certain extent why they would be like, "man we gotta handle our business." I ain't fittin' to let this muthafucka fuck mine off. But when I first started making this attempt to come back, none of those guys reached out to really help me and they had their own issues at the time, and I don't look for no nigga to help me because I could make it happen. But none of those guys really felt bad about none of my situations, except for Nate Dogg, let me take that lie back. Nate Dogg was the one person who continually through those seven years, always had great empathy for my situation and always told me that.

ThaFormula.com - Wasn't Nate Dogg in the military or something coming up?

D.O.C. - Shit, we were all in churches as kids. Hell Snoop used to sing in the church quire. And even to this point all of those guys are great guys, even Suge Knight. You know Suge didn't have to come to my hospital bed everyday. I wasn't paying him. He didn't know at that time we were gonna go make Death Row.

ThaFormula.com - Now what about that D.O.C.? I got to speak to Suge once before he went to jail. He seemed like a great guy and showed a lot of love. So I have always wondered, was he as bad as he was made out to be?

D.O.C. - Sure he was. He was a ding a long, that's for damn sure. Suge is the kind of dude to piss on your leg and laugh because he's 350 pounds and he knows you ain't really fittin' to do shit. He got sort of a kick out of that kind of shit. So the more power he got, the more outrageous he got. I believe that he's at a point now where he can't turn around and go back because he put himself out there as this huge Mafioso figure, which these dudes will do because they don't know how to express themselves any other way. But he's put himself out there as such a mafioso type figure that if he turns around then there will be somebody in his own camp waiting to do something to him. As far as I can see it that's the way that game works.

ThaFormula.com - So basically you feel that even if he wanted to turn back and make peace, there is just no turning back for him anymore?

D.O.C. - He really can't. Take into consideration Al Capone, he was at the height of "gangsterism." If he could have had a change of heart, they would have put a bullet in his ass so quick, you couldn't have smelt it and that's probably the same position old boy's in. He really can't play any other role but the one that he has created for himself.

ThaFormula.com - The stories told about Death Row with all the Gangstas in the studio, and how Ruthless it was, was it all true?

D.O.C. - Most of it. It could be kind of cheesy for me to say that my view is the right one, but the only reason that I stand up for mine is that I can stand up to you face to face and man to man and tell you I was Fucked up.

ThaFormula.com - Well you were one of the only ones that were never really caught up in any of the major beefs.

D.O.C. - For what? What they gonna fuck with me for. I'm not talkin bad about nobody.

ThaFormula.com - Well you were there since day one and I believe that if anyone was tellin' the truth, it would be the one that was there since day one and was never really caught up in any beefs.

D.O.C. - Well I got a movie thing happening right now and it's gonna bug muthafuckas out because number one, I don't fear none of these guys you know, so I'm not worried about it. When I get ready to do this movie thing and you can believe what I will tell you is a hundred percent truth. I mean all the shit that they did and all the shit that I did. Oh it's gonna be some shit dawg. It's gonna be some shit! I'm gonna tell you what the name is, but maybe if I'm lucky late 2003 or 2004 I'm gonna be puttin' this movie out and it's gonna be based around my experiences from when I met Dr. Dre in Dallas Ft. Worth Texas, until today. Were actually doing the end right now. It's a great movie because coming from Dallas, being sort of a church kid and getting caught up in a world of gang bangon and I dun saw shit that I knew nothin of.

ThaFormula.com - What are you looking at doing with the movie as far as distribution?

D.O.C. - Well actually, were talkin' to a couple of different people to see how viable it is to get it to a big screen, but I really just wanna get this monkey off my back. To get the truth off my chest.

ThaFormula.com - I always wondered how a real N.W.A. movie would have done?

D.O.C. - Oh, we gone see, and you know what's funny? I'm not gonna have any problems getting any of those guys to be involved in it. Any of them! That's the cool part about the position I'm in now. If I call Dr. Dre and ask him for some help, he's gonna say yes.

ThaFormula.com - Why is it that you get this respect from these guys that's very rare to get?

D.O.C. - Well, they know me. Those guys know me like nobody ever will ever know me. They knew me when I was in the front. We could have all took pictures and I would have been the nigga standing in the front, but I was comfortable standing in the back because in my mind, when they won, I won. Now Cube is one of the realest muthafuckas I'll ever meet, I already know that to be the truth because he told me when we were on this "Up In Smoke" shit. "When you need me, call me," so that's what I did and the nigga came right away. I mean he didn't take 5 minutes. He had to leave his movie shoot to come to the studio and give me 30 minutes and got back to work. Now you tell another muthafucka, "Oh 'I'ma call Cube and he'll be over here in 30 minutes, bust his lyrics and go back to work. He wil say, "Nigga what!!" That's Ice Cube man!

ThaFormula.com - That's love and loyalty man.

D.O.C. - That's what I'm talkin' about, and that's what it's really all about. See I never got a chance to finish the lessons. It's not really all about shoot em' bang bang, kill a muthafucka. We do need soldiers. Soldiers are very necessary, but we have to think. We can't be dumb. Sellin' see that's what got everybody geeked up. Eazy-E sold dope. That made everything lovely because that's all that really niggas could do, so they got off into making records about sellin' dope. Now everybody is a dope seller. Now what we never got a chance to tell these kids is that sellin' dope ain't cool. Sellin' dope ain't the shit, don't get it twisted. Just because niggas is rappin' about this shit and it may even sound great, but that's a record. It's like going to the movies and you see Arnold Shwartzenegger bustin' somebody in the ass may have looked pretty good, but that will get you put in jail. Nobody gave these kids that lesson. See when I lost my voice, that was my next lesson dawg. Well now after ten years, I finally got enough air back in my balls where I feel like talkin' and trust me when you hear this record, your gonna be like man! Matter of fact there is shit on this record that is so dirty, I know these muthafuckas are gonna be comin at me like, "Nigga how you gonna say some shit like that, hell naw get that off the shelf. You're ruining our kids. When they come at me with that conversation, watch how cool, calm, and collective as I sit back and converse with these folks. Oh, I got they ass. They fucked up( Laughs).

ThaFormula.com - Now let's get into the Chronic. You were in the "Nuthin' but a G Thang" video and everything seemed great at Death Row. Was it?

D.O.C. - Yeah, everything was great at that time.  I still didn't have anything of my own but I was staying at Dre's house and I had no money of my own, but I could ask Dre for 5 grand at any time and get it.  Matter of fact, I used to ask Dre for 5 grand every 3 or 4 days for about 2 years and would get it and then go spend it up on dope.  I don't know if Dre knew, but how could you not know?

ThaFormula.com - So how was it recording the first Chronic during that time?

D.O.C. - Man, "The Chronic" was the most fun that I have ever had on a record.  Snoop brought a vibe to the music that wasn't there before.  If there was levels to the game, let's say NWA stayed intact and I never had the accident.  The next level would be Snoop.  That was the only way you could come and totally fuck everybody up because when you the youngest you always gonna fuck it up, and he was the young one at the time.  Now let me get this point straight first.  I would have forever been Marvin Gaye god dammit.  When I opened up my mouth, it would have been nothing but jewelry, but when Snoop came, me being the type of person that I am I would have had so much love for him and put so much energy into his shit the same way I did that he would have had no choice but to be the shit. The same thing with this guy 6'-2".  6'-2" really has no choice but to be the shit because I'm right behind him and I'm not allowing anything else.  Any song 6'-2" does, I'm producing it.  All of the shit that you have heard.  I went here and grabbed a beat from this person and that person, then I brought the beat back home and I got in the studio with this dude and we started punching out songs.  6'-2" is not allowed to be fucked up right now. I'll give him a good 5 or 6 years and then when he gets ready to make his own records.  If he hasn't learned how to make great songs by then, then you will start hearing some shit where it ain't as good.  Same thing with these other guys. I mean I'm not gonna say nobody's names and put them out there like that, but you know who I'm talkin' about and what I'm talkin' about.  There is a difference between what you were doing at this time and what you doing at this time and it ain't just skill level.  Your skill ain't went no where.

ThaFormula.com - Well as a fan, I do have to admit that I miss the old Dre and the old Snoop.

D.O.C. - That's right, I miss the old Snoop too, but in Snoop's defense, your music is a reflection of what's going on in your world.  So if your congested and there is a lot of shit around you and it's hard for you to get together and really make that magic then it's gonna be hard to do, and Snoop when he made magic, he had me and Dre.  So it's gonna be hard for Snoop to go and make that magic without me and Dre and it's really gonna be hard for Snoop to make that magic even if he had Dre without me there because there is always gonna be a piece missing.

ThaFormula.com - During the making of the first Chronic, who all was in the studio at that time?

D.O.C. - Oh, we all were man.  We were there everyday and there is no better place to be than the studio.  That's where all the weed at.  That's where the drinks is at, and niggaz is doing they thang.  Besides, I took it very personal that these guys wouldn't make bullshit around me.  I remember when Dre first started making the beat to "Dre Day."  He had a lot of shit missing and it was certain things that he was doing and I was like, "that sounds like a load of shit."  He says "OK we'll wait till' tomorrow." By the time I got to the studio the next day that muthafucka was bangin.'

ThaFormula.com - Alright I got a good one for you.  Explain the reasons behind the Jimmy Z album, and the Tairrie B album?

D.O.C. - Ahhaha!!  That was Jerry Heller's great idea along with Eazy -E's futuristic sort of vision I guess.  But really that was probably Jerry's attempt at getting Eazy to put his money behind crossover acts that could make him money.  Knowing Jerry Heller, he probably had a piece of each of those acts.

ThaFormula.com - Did Dre want to do those projects?

D.O.C. - Hell Nah, man.  Dr. Dre didn't wanna do any of that.  Well, let me take Jimmy Z back.  Dre is a musician so he may have wanted do get in there, but I couldn't see so I spent very little time around him when he was doing that stuff.  Tairrie B? Nah! She was sorta a primadona in the rap world but Dre is not into working with muthafuckaz that ain't good. If you will notice, Dre has done 2 albums on very few people.  I think he did 2 on Eminem, I think he did 2 Chronics and 2 NWA records.  Everybody else only got one.

ThaFormula.com - Is that by choice?

D.O.C. - Sure it is, and this is Dre talkin' when I talk.  He said to me the hardest thing to do in the world is to make a second album on a muthafucka because once you make a platinum album on somebody then they get full of they own oats.  Then it's all about they wanna do this and they wanna do that.  But like I said before, when you're in the studio with Dre, that shit that's on tape is what's in his mind, and that shit used to piss me off. I'm talking about ferociously when these guys would come and tell me Dre's stealing beats. As a matter of fact, I remember when I went to do this Shyne video in New York for "That's Gangsta."  Puffy was having a meeting with all his people, which is something that Dre didn't do, which I thought was the shit on Puffy's part lending an ear to people around him and giving them a forum to speak to see what they thought.  Anyway, it was they're understanding that Mel-Man was behind a lot of the shit going on over there.

ThaFormula.com - Yeah, that's what a lot of people seem to think.

D.O.C.- Well, me being me, and me having a couple of little drinks in me at the time Ha Ha!  I felt it necessary for me to break up there little meeting and tell them no that's not the truth.  If you wanna know what's popping, ask me I was there.  Dr. Dre does that.  Anything you hear over there is Dr. Dre.  Even if Dr. Dre left the studio and allowed those guys to make their own records, part of that shit would still be Dr. Dre and believe me that's only the good part.  These guys know nothing about making great beats and have very little idea about making a great song and wouldn't know a hit if you took "Thriller" before it came out and smacked them with it.

ThaFormula.com - So tell me what exactly did Yella do for NWA?

D.O.C. - Yella was sorta the technical kind of dude.  He understood the machines that these guys worked on.  He knew them backwards and forwards. He was great with the tape machines, drum machines, and boards.  I'll put it to you like this. I considered myself to be another pair of ears in the studio when Dre was working.  Well, if I was another pair of ears, then Yella was another pair of hands. It's hard to make a great record by yourself man.  There will always be at least 5 great musicians together to make a classic record. That's what we had with NWA's records, that's what we had with the first Chronic record.

ThaFormula.com - Then what about the first D.O.C. album?

D.O.C. - Well, me and Dr. Dre, were an anomaly.  Like Dre could have made a whole beat record with no guitars, no bass, and I could have made raps for all those beats and still would have made a great record. What Dre does is make shit that you could see in your head when it's playing.  He knows how to bring drama.  He knows how to take it away and leave it all up to the artist.  He knows how to sometimes just make it quiet.  I mean that dudes pretty god damn good.

ThaFormula.com - After the first Chronic dropped, did you see things starting to come to an end or not?

D.O.C. - Oh sure I did.  See the shit that they were doing was unnecessary and sooner or later that shit is gonna catch up.  The drug shit had started to get kind of old.  In '94, I asked Dre what's up with me rappin'. I had written a song and he said you should let me put that on this next record and it really pissed me off because nobody was really givin' a fuck about me.  I told him what about me muthafucka, I wanna rap to.  I wanted to do something, but they had regulated me to comic relief.  I'm a damn fool anyway.  I'm a natural comedian so that's what I had been regulated to.  I was the comic relief on the album. 

ThaFormula.com - So Dre said no about you rappin then?

D.O.C. - He didn't think that you could make a good record with this voice.  So that's when I left out of there.  See me and Dre is like a big brother, little brother thing and when the big brother piss his little brother off, then his little brother is gonna number one, take his shit and run with it, which I did.  "Heltah Skeltah" was really a Dr. Dre record that he was starting to plan on working on that I had actually already started writing lyrics for, and one of the songs that he was trying to takeaway from me was a song that he wanted to put on "Heltah Skeltah."  So I was like "fuck this shit," went to Atlanta and recorded the album.

ThaFormula.com - When you look back at that album now, what are your thoughts on it?

D.O.C. - I think that the album was as far as hip-hop records are concerned not a great record.  There is merit to the record because of who it is and because of the shit the dude done went through trying to get his shit done, but I didn't go buy it.  I'll put it to you like that and if I wouldn't go buy it then it ain't really happening.

ThaFormula.com - Do you think it was a mistake when you look back at it now?

D.O.C. - Hell nah, I needed money.  I had no money.

ThaFormula.com - So did the album end up doing alright?

D.O.C. - I think it ended up selling 290,000 copies.  I had some real strong D.O.C. fans out there that I hated to bug and jack them out of their 16 dollars like that.

ThaFormula.com - You know what Doc, even if you were to do a show and you were lip synching, I would pay for that shit.

D.O.C. - Well I'll put it to you like this.  I haven't tried it yet.

ThaFormula.com - Man I would pay just to see you on stage perform the songs I never got to see you do as a kid?

D.O.C. - No shit!  You know what that really fucks me up, but I am gonna trip you out.  You just gave me one of the dopest ideas I ever had.  I gotta do it man.  I know it would be the shit.  That's great, thanks a lot man.

ThaFormula.com - Now back to the first Chronic LP.  How do rate that album?

D.O.C. - The dopest hip-hop record of all time.  "Straight Outta Compton" could have been the greatest, but it was so raw and hard that it didn't give you no time to fuckin' party and shit.  With "The Chronic" that's all you did and you never knew what was coming next.  With all the NWA records, after a while you kind of got an idea of what was gonna happen next.   
ThaFormula.com - What was your involvement in the Niggaz4Life LP?

D.O.C. - The same as always. I wrote the songs that made those niggaz sing. That's what I did. Also Kokane had started coming around then. Above the Law was real deep into everything at that point and I started writing more for Dre and Ren, but I wrote everybody's shit by then.

ThaFormula.com - What album do you think was more enjoyable to record, "Straight Outta Compton" or "Niggaz4Life?"

D.O.C. – “Sraight Outta Compton.” “Niggaz4Life” wasn't as much fun because they was to busy trying to prove that they were just as good without Cube and that took a lot of the fun out of the shit and the money was all fucked up. Some people had money, some didn't. Once Cube left really the energy was gone.

ThaFormula.com - Do you remember a few years ago when you were on Eazy-E's radio show with the Dogg Pound?

D.O.C. - Yep, I remember that. They was on the radio talkin’ shit and Eazy said something that was a lie and I was sitting right there listening to the shit so they handed me the phone and I let him have it which is what I do, but it was just really fun to me. It was no big deal, I wasn't really trippin’ with the muthafucka, I was just jokin’ and laughin’.

ThaFormula.com - How serious was the beef between Death Row and Ruthless?

D.O.C. - Wasn't very serious to me. It was pretty funny if you ask me. But just like any other saga, these guys they started believin’ the hype. They wanna gangbang on records and all that old kind of dumb shit and at that time I couldn't really say nothin’ cause I was probably doing the same shit.

ThaFormula.com - How many songs did you guys record for the first “Chronic” that didn't make the album?

D.O.C. - Shit, maybe 2 or 3. Sometimes niggaz would record a whole bunch of songs and record the best ones. It used to be like that early in the days, but if you were gonna do 19 songs on a record and by the time we get to 21 we pretty much done figured it out.

ThaFormula.com - When exactly did the drama start to kick in?

D.O.C.- Well there was always drama around our house, but the bigger that people started to get the more the money started coming into the picture that's when shit started getting fucked up. None of those guys really knew what they were doing. They didn't know how to accept the money. They didn't know what to do with it when they got it. Suge's wife was Snoop's manager. She was probably taking the guys money and it was just all kinds of crazy shit going on. The bigger Snoop got and when muthafuckaz started losin’ control of Snoop, then you could see it wasn't gonna last that long. After so long Snoop would be like “man fuck this shit and I'm not havin’ this shit,” cause he's the star and he was tired of being told what to do, where to go and shit like that. It's hard to have a company run by a bunch of young cats who don't know shit about business. You will have a lot of muthafuckaz just trying to grab they balls. You can't have a great business if all of your business practices are gangbang oriented because there is no loyalty among street niggaz like that. I wouldn't give a damn what they told you.

ThaFormula.com - So during all this what were you and Dre doing?

D.O.C. - Well Dre was living good. Dre was the shit. He was bringing all the shit to the table so he's getting all the pussy, he's getting all the money and he's getting the 5 mics. Me, I'm with Dre. Wherever he was at, that's probably where I was at.

ThaFormula.com - Were you still fucked up on drugs at that time?

D.O.C. - Pretty much and that lasted from about 1990 to 1997…

ThaFormula.com - Wow! 7 years man?

D.O.C. - Yep, and I'm not your classic dope fiend muthafucka. It's like drinkin’ man. I don't have an off switch. Like some muthafuckas can drink and they get a buzz and they cool. Me, Im gonna drink until the bar is closed. There is no good way to put it. I’ma be in that muthafucka drinkin ’ till either I pass out, there's no more liquor or I ran out of money or some kind of goofy ass reason like that, and that went for anything else. It wasn't that I was addicted to it. It was just shit that I did to get away from feelin’ fucked up and I didn't have a stop switch. So it was off and on for about 7 years. Playin’ games here, playin’ games there, and I met 6’-2” in 97 and that's when I started making sort of a turnaround.

ThaFormula.com - When exactly did you leave to do “Heltah Skeltah?”

D.O.C. - I left L.A. at the end of ‘94 because I wanted to rap and Dre didn't see it.

ThaFormula.com - Do you agree with Dre now when you look back at how things turned out with that project?

D.O.C. - Well that's a yes and a no answer, because if you’re Dr. Dre you can take “twiddle dee” and make a hit record. You’re Dr. Dre god dammit! There’s nothing that you can't do in a studio, so if it was in your heart to make a hit record on me, you would have done it. You would have found some kind of way to do it. When you think of the old D.O.C., it's probably best to leave it like that, but you know when you think about D.O.C. the person, the man that's still breathin’ right now, still has music in his soul that he has to get up out of him, then you want him to get that shit out.

ThaFormula.com - So you made the move in ‘94 and went where?

D.O.C. - I went to Atlanta Georgia. I started staying in the house of my homeboy MC Breed and I started helping him work on a record. The record was called “The New Breed.”

ThaFormula.com - It's funny how that album turned out to be the best album he ever recorded and had a sound similar to the Chronic.

D.O.C. - Yep. I mean the formula goes where I go. You took 2 of the major components from the Chronic days with me and Colin Wolfe, and moved them over here and that's really what it was. Colin was a musician so Dre would say play, and Colin would play. Sooner or later he would come up on a couple of chords that we all liked so, uh, I'll give you a perfect example. “Deep Cover,” the guy was just playin’ the 4 notes and Dre said “wait a minute keep playin’ that.” That baseline was Colin Wolfe's shit. Dre added the drum the piano hit and that was it, that was the song.

ThaFormula.com - You know I remember that "Gotta Get Mine" video with 2pac. That was a classic Breed track right there?

D.O.C. - Yeah that was a good song. I was in that video too. That was at Andre Rison's house before it got burnt up. The dude had a good record man. Now MC Breed who was a good friend of mine, has the ability to make classic rap records, but chooses not to.

ThaFormula.com - Why is that?

D.O.C. - Breed is just one of those dudes man that no matter what you tell him, he is gonna do whatever the fuck he wants to do and it's hard to make a classic record when what's going on in your head is the only thing that's coming out on record. You have to be able to be flexible and know that the hardest thing for an artist to ever do is to listen to his own shit objectively because it's his shit and he's gonna love it no matter what. He's gonna want it to be good, no matter what, when in actuality it could sound like a load of shit. Breed is probably the closest thing I got outside of Dre to a brother with me, where me and this guy will argue and I mean argue even to the point where he thought Pac was the coldest and I thought Biggie was the coldest.

ThaFormula.com - How do you feel about the hip-hop being done by artists nowadays?

D.O.C. - Most of the hip-hop I hear now sounds like it's been dipped in shit. It used to be that there was some dope rappers, a good amount of cool rappers, and a little bit of garbage. Now all there is, is a bunch of cool rappers and a shit load of garbage.

ThaFormula.com - When do you feel this change came about?

D.O.C. - When Death Row exploded it was dead. When Dr. Dre left Death Row it died. It may have died even before that. It may have died shortly after Snoop Dogg's first record came out. In all fairness I have to say after the “Above the Rim” record, that was probably the last little bit of last “G-Funk” shit. When you got to the Dogg Pound record, it had started changing again. He started leaving the streets even more then.

ThaFormula.com - Did Dre have any input on the Dogg Pound album?

D.O.C. - Sure, you could hear it in the music. You have to make a record on them. There not gonna come to the table with songs that you could use, so you have to manufacture records with these guys, and Dre was probably tired of dealin’ with all them muthafuckas and tired of coming to work with 50,000 gang bangers in the studio. He was probably sick and tired of that shit, so you can tell the music stopped being hard and started being softer. He started having pretty singin’ in every piece of the shit. Even though niggaz was talkin’ about murderin’ muthafuckas, the music sort of made you wanna go to sleep.

ThaFormula.com - What are your thoughts on someone like Devin the Dude, ‘cause he reminds me a lot of 6’-2”?

D.O.C. - Devin is a 6’-2” guy, which means his talent is so genuine it would be hard for you not to like Devin. I cannot wait until I can get this “Deuce” project up & runnin’ so that I could get back to finishing 6’-2”'s album so I could put him and Devin on a song together. I can't wait for that shit, and I just wanna talk on that record shit! Like when Snoop was writing “G Thang,” I asked him “wh
 

Chad Vader

  • Guest
Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #48 on: November 14, 2007, 11:44:32 AM »
DJ Yella interview;
http://www.aftermathmusic.com/_interviews/djyella_october_2003.html

Aftermathmusic.com:
We all know you as a former member, producer of the NWA. But please introduce yourself for the young fans and give them some short information about you.

DJ Yella:
Woow. Oh ok. Me and Dr. Dre produced all the NWA and Eazy E, all the Ruthless stuff back in the days. We sold 10 million records probably. I produced over 150 adult movies. I?m doin everything (laughs)


Aftermathmusic.com:
Why the name DJ Yella?

DJ Yella:
Actually it came from a record. They say Yella at the beginning of the song. A DJ friend of mine, gave me the name and I started with it.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Who are the biggest influences for you?

DJ Yella:
Really? There were no influences for us, because when we started back then, the rap was kinda new. So, we had nobody to look up. But maybe Run DMC. Run DMC was like the heavyweights there. So there was nobody. We had to learn everything on our own.


Aftermathmusic.com:
When did you start to notice a big chance in HipHop. And what made you try to live from music?

DJ Yella:
I guess, at the Eazy E.'s death I was kinda bored with it. Once he died, I was just like 'Ok, I?m just done, I?m, just finished.'


Aftermathmusic.com:
Tell us a little bit about the World Class Wreckin Cru, please!

DJ Yella:
Well, me and Dre was in it. Before that Dre and I were DJ's in a club. We were DJ's in a club for a year or 2 and then we called the Wreckin crew as a DJ crew. We started making records. We made 2 albums but we never got paided. Thats why we left the Wreckin crew. After that, we started NWA.


Aftermathmusic.com:
You are always seen as NWA's quietest member ...

DJ Yella:
Oh yes. I was the quietest person.


Aftermathmusic.com:
You said "I don't think NWA started West Coast" ... Who started the Westcoast for you?

DJ Yella:
Uuumm. I think the Wreckin crew started the Westcoast before NWA. But NWA actually ... uuum, we started the whole Gangsta Rap, when it was called back then. But actually the Wreckin crew started the Westcoast sound.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Looking back at the start of NWA ... Whats's your most important impressions from the start till the end of the NWA?

DJ Yella:
I guess, the most important thang was we made music how we like it, you know and not trying to make some for somebody else or tryin' to make a hit. We never tryin' to make a hit. We made music. So that's what it really was.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Everyone compares you to Dre and says, in NWA Dre was the musicial brains and you was just the extra pair of hands on the technical side. Is that true?

DJ Yella:
Yeah, I mean, you know ... oh yeah. I recorded everything. Me and Dre was all the time in the studio. More than other members.



Aftermathmusic.com:
If you look at the situation with the police in the states today. Would you like to record a song like "@#%$ the Police" again?

DJ Yella:
Naaw. I don't think I would make a song like that. (laughs). The society is totally changed. And when we made the song we wanted to start no controversy. It just the way we felt, growing up in th ghetto.


Aftermathmusic.com:
How much of NWA's early production was really you and how much did Dre do?

DJ Yella:
Dre definetely did most of it. But we both produced, like in the Wreckin crew. In the Wreckin Dre did half and I did the other half. In the NWA it was more Dre and a group thang, too.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Yeah, you know, a lot of fans said, it's a shame that all NWA's credit goes to Dr. Dre and Ice Cube and you ghost produced all NWA's @#%$ and did some dope @#%$ 4 Eazy on 187(Dr. Dre its on). What's your thoughts about those comments?

DJ Yella:
Really? .. Uuum you know, NWA was a group. It was no one man. Everybody was together. Everybody contribute. Dre did a lot and still. We was a team for almost 10 years.



Aftermathmusic.com:
Was you even asked to be in the new NWA, 'cause you haven't never been mentioned in all the NWA reunion hype.

DJ Yella:
Well, there wasn't no NWA reunion. There was a couple of songs they did on Cube's album. And Ren and Dre was invited to rap on the song, but the media builted up for look like NWA. That's all. If there is a reunion, I`d be in it.


Aftermathmusic.com:
How is your relationship with everybody from the group?

DJ Yella:
I don't talk to everybody as much, but everything is still ok.


Aftermathmusic.com:
You know, the fans wanna a NWA reunion, but with old Eazy verses and not with Snoop. Could this happened?

DJ Yella:
Uuum, if there's one, I have to talk to Dre. We have to sit down and do it. Snoop would NOT be a member, he would just be a guest rapper, you know.


Aftermathmusic.com:
What's the most often asked question N.W.A. gets hit with, that you hate to get hit with?

DJ Yella:
Uuuum, that's a good one (laughs). There were so many ... Uuum, 'How did the group started' is probably one, 'Where we get the name from' and I don't really know where the name came from. Was it from Eazy or Dre or Cube. I don't really know (laughs).


Aftermathmusic.com:
Long before Snoop Dogg released his Doggystyle movie, you was in the porn industry. Since your main focus in porn how did you get into that?

DJ Yella:
I have been shooting porn films for 8 years. I've directed over 250 movies. Snoop came out, when I put my name on it. I was doin porn when Eazy E was alive. A friend of mine, called Big Man, brought me the idea. He originally brought the idea to Eazy E, but he didn't really jump on it. But I jumped on it. I don't know why, but I did.


Aftermathmusic.com:
So, what made you decide to use the name DJ Yella in porn after so many years of not using it?

DJ Yella:
Uum, when we did the movies, I thought 'I can be gettin credit for this'. So I decided to use my name and my face on it. I just wanted to get credits for it. I shot so many without my name on it. That's all.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Your plans are releasing one video a month through Yella Entertainment www.djyella.net/ ? One video per month? Damn?

DJ Yella:
Actually I put out 1-2 movies per month. But the ones with the music I wanna get close to almost one every month. I actually have a soundtrack to it.


Aftermathmusic.com:
You mean the "Bangin? in LA" DVD?

DJ Yella:
Yes. On the CD is the song with me an Ren.


Aftermathmusic.com:
The song is great ...

DJ Yella:
(laughs) ... yeah it is.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Since I buy Yella's porn @#%$ I want to know who are your favorite girls to shoot and who you want to shoot?

DJ Yella:
The favourite girl is Obsession www.urbaneyecandy.net/mod...ot007.jpg. I also like this girl called Ice www.urbaneyecandy.net/mod...not010.jpg which is one the cover of the "Bangin" one. Obsession and Ice - I definetily like them.


Aftermathmusic.com:
What's up with the music productions for the DVD's? Did you all the production?

DJ Yella:
Oh yeah. I did everything.


Aftermathmusic.com:
1st of all, how did you hook up with Eazy E.?

DJ Yella:
Actually Dre knew Eazy, when me and Dre was in the Wreckin crew. Dre knew him from his neighbourhood. And Dre was bringin him around. Because originally, Eazy was no Ruthless. He hang around with 2 guys from New York. They recorded a song together, but they told him, the song wasn't good enough and they didn't wanna do more. So, Dre made Eazy doin. I met Dre I met Eazy during that time.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Please tell us about your friendship with Eazy?

DJ Yella:
Uuumm you know, we were like partners, great partners. That's why I never left him, because he never did anything bad to me. So I jumped on the ship (Ruthless). If the company is good to you, stay with it.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Eazy died on AIDS - what was your reaction when you heard about it?

DJ Yella:
I actually heard it before the world heard it. And I was like '@#%$ the life'. So I was done for music, really! I was really done with it.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Where all of you guys in the hospital?

DJ Yella:
I only got to see him one time. He was already like in a coma. Dre came in later ... I don't know if Cube or Ren came to see Eazy.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Was Eazy's death a reason to leave Ruthless?

DJ Yella:
I don't know. I didn't talk to him so much. I didn't know he was sick. It was like a month he was sick for a while. And I really didn't talk to him within a month. He was sick and he wasn't trying to tell me. But by the time I found out he was sick it was to late. He already was in a coma. So, I couldn't even talk to him.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Is it true that Dresta bought the last remaining (unheard) Eazy tracks off you?

DJ Yella:
No. I got the last Eazy track which is never coming out. I got the last. I made his last 2-3 songs. There's 1 or 2 that Ruthless has, that I don't think it's been out yet. But I got 1 track that nobody has. It was actually a diss.


Aftermathmusic.com:
A Diss?

DJ Yella:
Yeah. It was a diss to Cube. And I'll never release that. So that's a track which nobody will hear.


Aftermathmusic.com:
What happened to those Eazy-E tracks you did with DJ Quik?

DJ Yella:
There were no vocals on it. It was just a couple of tracks. So we did a lot of tracks that never even got the vocals.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about Eazy E.?

DJ Yella:
To me he was a good person. Not a good person, a great person. He started a lot of stuff, he helped a lot of charity, he loved his kids. He was one of the pioneers, NWA was the whole pioneers. But if you look at all the groups, they came from us. So that's what music is today. So we started it and other groups came out. Dre still producing groups. So there's a lot of music that came some way through Ruthless.


Aftermathmusic.com:
You haven't seen Dre in years. Is there nothing between you guys?

DJ Yella:
I talked to Dre last year. Everytime I see him, it's like the old times. There's no beef between us. Never real beef. When Eazy made the diss song I was not in the video and nothing. I had no reason to diss Dre.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Please tell something about the production process together with Dre back in the days, who came with the ideas and such.

DJ Yella:
He came out with most of the ideas. He listened to old records or he called me 'I got this in my mind' ... Bumm bumm and we went into the studio. He was in the studio more time than anybody. The other people came around and do there vocals. And Dre was there all the time.



Aftermathmusic.com:
There has been a long history of artists saying that Dre steals beats, from your experience how true is it?

DJ Yella:
What? Oh nawww. Dre don't steal beats. That's bullshit. He listened to a record, get's a idea from .. that's it.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Did you read the Source article about Aftermath and Dr. Dre? Some of Dr. Dre's closest associates, Big Chuck, Mel Man and Neff-U, have broken ties with Aftermath and are ready to expose some of the label?s secrets. They?re ready to get the credit they deserve. What's your thoughts on this the article, that Dre is taking all credits of the beats?

DJ Yella:
Not really. But the thang is, he has a staff around him that make him tracks. The bring him tracks. He can say: 'I like this, I like that.' Whether they keep their publishing and all that that was up to them. If they sold him the tracks, thats their mistakes. While Dre is taking the tracks? He's bringing the success and that's why they upset. Dre is doing business and I?m sure he's paid well for. They should handle the deals like I want publishing, I want this and I want that. Thats the deal. He doesn't steal beats. I know Dre since the early 80' and he's stealing nothing.


Aftermathmusic.com:
That's a very good statement. So, Ice Cube is working with Dr. Dre on his upcomin album? Can we expect some productions from you, too?

DJ Yella:
I doubt it. I haven't talk to Cube in a while. He's doin his own thing and stuff like that. I?m just staying with my music, but we do a reunion album, I?d jump on. Right now, I just wanna do soundtracks for the movies. And the matter of fact, the next movie I do is with Ren again. I wanna do that one more time.


Aftermathmusic.com:
The Aftermath n Shady artists - Your thoughts on Eminem and 50 Cent?

DJ Yella:
I think they are great. Both are heavyweights now. You know, but it all comes from Dre. Without Dre would they heavyweights? I don't know. Dre is one gifted producer. I?m not trying to say 'He's the greatest', but he's really gifted. And I see this since 20 years. And that's what made the Eminem, now 50 Cent ... That's all Dre. They're great rappers. But is a beat better than the rappers? So, is the music better? So it's all a combination. They're great rappers and then they got a great producer behind. Dre makes the heavyweights and they should be heavyweights for a while til the day they messed up himself. And that's stupid. They could be heavyweights for few albums. If you see Eminem, he got few albums out.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Any words to Dr. Dre and Ice Cube or do you have anything to say about them?

DJ Yella:
Dre ... give me a call (laughs loud). We haven't talked in a while. We usually sit there and talked for a while. And don't change your number so much, I can't catch you. And to Cube ... I have nothing against nobody. Matter of fact, I like the interview with Dre on one of my movies, so you should make sure, he gets that message (laughs).


Aftermathmusic.com:
I?m trying to call him or his management soon.

DJ Yella:
Ok thanks!


Aftermathmusic.com:
What can you tell us about Dirty Red aka Shaki?

DJ Yella:
When Eazy died, all that got cut off. He was a good rapper. I liked his style, his voice and everything. He was there on the wrong time.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Who do you think really has the potential to blow up on the Westcoast at the moment? Is it Game, Crooked I or Ren?

DJ Yella:
Ren definetely. But music is coming from everywhere now. It's not East or West. So it's kinda hard who can be dominate. There're so many rappers now. But only few is gonna be heavyweights. But these heavyweights are in all different parts of the country now.


Aftermathmusic.com:
What's your thoughts on DeathRow and Suge Knight right now?

DJ Yella:
I never said anything about it and I definetely not start today.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Is that true that you worked on the upcomin 213 album?

DJ Yella:
No that's not true.


Aftermathmusic.com:
What do you think of all the beefs in rap game right now?

DJ Yella:
It's all bullshit (laughs). Some people started beefs to sell their own records and stuff like that. But if there's a beef with a heavyweight people listen to that beef more.


Aftermathmusic.com:
What are you going to be doing after Rens album is finished?

DJ Yella:
Uuum I should be like hopefully the biggest black director in the porn industry. That's my goal. Cause I have soundtracks on the movies, and that's what I really focus on Hip Hop porn.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Since you last produced, there has been an army of new producers like Kanye West, Just Blaze, Neptunes, Mel Man... and old producers like Dre who be droppin hot @#%$. How are you gonna enter in to producing again and what sound will he be bringing?

DJ Yella:
Well, I?m not trying to bring the songs for the music side. I'm recording songs for the porn industry. So I?m not be in a competition with these other people, because in the porn side is nobody there. People under contracts can't really do soundtracks for the porn.


Aftermathmusic.com:
So if you are gonna bring that NWA sound back or if you are gonna try something new?

DJ Yella:
Uuuumm, I don't know. Music has changed my life. So I can't go back to the old sounds. The old was great, you know, but it's old now.


Aftermathmusic.com:
What todays new rappers would Yella like to create music with?

DJ Yella:
Ooohh ... that's a good question. There're so many good once with different styles. I can't pick it's hard. But definetely 50 Cent and Eminem. Of course Ren. But you know, it's hard, it's really hard to decide.


Aftermathmusic.com:
What's in the future for you? How do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

DJ Yella:
I?m gonna be the #1 black distributor in porn. In 5 years? Oh yeah. Definetely. I've been there in 8 - 9 years. I know this business. So my future is Hip Hop porn.


DJ YELLA Q & A (1 word)
NWA: Great
2Pac: Good
Your album "one mo nigga to go": Ohh ... Damn (Laughs) .. one word? Classic
Ruthless: History
Dr. Dre: Gifted
Westcoast Rap at the moment: Hot



Aftermathmusic.com:
Any last words and any shout outs to Aftermathmusic.com?

DJ Yella:
This is DJ Yella and Aftermathmusic.com is #1. Look out for DJ Yella, you know, the 'Bangin in LA' and hopefully Dre will call me after this interview and me and Timba hook up or something.


Aftermathmusic.com:
Thank you for your time and for the interview!

DJ Yella:
Yeah no problem. Keep in touch!

   
 

Dre-Day

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #49 on: November 14, 2007, 11:47:17 AM »
i've read those last 2 interviews before, but they are very interesting, especially the one with thaformula.com, it's very long and detailed!  8)
« Last Edit: November 14, 2007, 11:50:29 AM by Dre-Day »
 

Chad Vader

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #50 on: November 14, 2007, 11:50:34 AM »
MC Ren interview by www.thaformula.com
http://www.thaformula.com/mc_ren_memory_lane_thaformula_music.html

Quote
Q & A W/ MC Ren: a trip down memory lane
feedback: info@thaformula.com
2004

http://www.thaformula.com/mc_ren_memory_lane_thaformula_music.html


ThaFormula.com - Alright Ren, let's take it from the top. Did you go to the Roadium (a swapmeet in Gardena, California) a lot in the early days?

MC Ren - Yeah me and Eazy used to go up there. Steve Yano had his little booth up there and me and Eric used to go up to that muthafucka looking for some new shit, new records. 'Cause Dre he used to do the tapes for Steve and shit and every time Steve was sellin' the muthafuckas me and Eric would go up there every weekend, 'cause back then we was trying to be known anyway so we used to go up there just to get that little vibe. Back in the day I remember he had somebody up there airbrushing muthafuckin' T-Shirts, I remember I got me an airbrushed T-Shirt.

ThaFormula.com - What do you feel represents the L.A. Hip-Hop landmark?

MC Ren - For me the landmark of Hip-Hop L.A. was 1580 KDAY. They used to do all them shows. That's really where muthafuckas heard everything at first. KDAY was the link to all the shit. KDAY would bring all the Hip-Hop muthafuckas into town and do they little promo shows and shit with him. So it had to be KDAY 'cause you could get the East Coast shit. They played all the Uncle Jam's Army, had all the mixmasters on the weekends scratching like a muthafucka all night. Tony G, Julio G, remember that shit?

ThaFormula.com - Hell Yeah!

MC Ren - I remember they used to give shows at "The Casa" and all that shit way back in the day. I be askin' fools about "The Casa" and a lot of fools don't be remembering that shit. I saw Audio 2 at "The Casa" when they had "Top Billin'" out. Yeah, so it definitely had to be KDAY. I remember me and Eric had went up there for vinyl and shit like that, the Roadium was number one. That's where Dre used to get all his muthafuckin' records. 'Cause see when Dre used to do them tapes with Steve, what he would do was he would make Steve them tapes and Steve would pay Dre with records. That's where we got all the break records and all the break beats. When we did "Straight Outta Compton," all those records were from Steve. Dre do the tapes and he (Yano) would break Dre off with a gang of break beats.

ThaFormula.com - Do you consider yourself a lyricist or a MC?

MC Ren - Man I consider myself both really. I'm "MC" Ren and if you're a real MC you got lyrics. That's how you know niggaz been around a long time when they still got muthafuckin' "MC" on their shit. That shit is old you know what I'm saying. Niggaz today don't even be like that. How I was thinking back then coming up is different from a lot of these muthafuckas today. It's just how everybody was thinkin' back in them days is different from what muthafuckas is thinkin' today on what a MC is, what lyrics is and you could tell in how the music is. 'Cause back in the day muthafuckas had to be hard and you had to come with that mentality of "I'm an MC, I got lyrics." You can't just come in the game back in the day talkin' about anything. You had to come talkin' about some shit or muthafuckas would just call you what you are.

ThaFormula.com - Hip-Hop is very depressing right now man...

MC Ren - Man this shit is so wack right now man. It's like bitch shit now man and I hate when a muthafucka come out and it could be a wack ass muthafucka who comes out, sell some records, and then you got to hear all this niggaz wack homies! Back in the day it wasn't even like that.

ThaFormula.com - You know I'm really surprised that you're feelin' this way 'cause most artists are acting like nothing's wrong with Hip-Hop, talkin' about how dope some MC is cause they're gonna work with them now and make some dough, or just plain scared to speak on this shit...

MC Ren - I ain't scared of shit. I'll say anything. See muthafuckas be scared 'cause they be thinkin', "if I say something that might fuck me up being on T.V. or that might fuck me up being on the radio…," you know what I mean? All that bitch shit! Man you ain't on that muthafucka but so what. So what!! Fuck the Radio! 'Cause the radio, they are gonna give you some bubble gum shit anyway. Nigga if you are an artist speak your mind. That's like niggaz who be saying they are MC's but other muthafuckas write their rhymes. Nigga you ain't no MC if a muthafucka is writing your rhymes! Speak your mind and be a true MC. Back then muthafuckas didn't give a fuck. That's Hip-Hop! When you start listening to record company muthafuckas and them PR muthafuckas that just thinkin' about money saying don't say this don't do that, that's bitch shit! 'Cause I have had a gang of muthafuckas come at me with "don't say this," and "Ren we want you to do that." I'll be like "man I ain't fittin' to be doing that shit, I'm not fittin' to be puttin' my tail between my legs, scratchin' where I don't itch, doin' a little shuckin' and jivin'." Fuck all that! I'm just gonna say a lot of niggaz be scared in the game. They know niggaz be actin' like bitches, be scared to say shit about niggaz in the game cause they be like, "oh if I say this he ain't gonna do this for me or if I say this he ain't gonna rap on it." Fuck that! I remember back in the day niggaz didn't even give a fuck about having a gang of niggaz on they album. That's a MC. They would probably have about one or two muthafuckas if any on their shit, and they would just hold the whole muthafuckin' record down. Remember Run, LL, and Whodini where muthafuckas would put out a record once a year? When you had to wait a year or two just to get a new Run DMC or whatever? It's like muthafuckas today don't be thinkin' on that level.

ThaFormula.com - Hip-Hop was good when you could go to the Indoor Swap Meets and get the shit a couple of weeks before it dropped cause you knew it was gonna be dope and it was worth the extra money for the tape...

MC Ren - That was the Golden Era man. It's fucked up. I'ma tell you like this. The closest shit that muthafuckas was gonna get to that was Pac and Biggie. After they died it just went downhill really. Think about it man. Since them two niggaz died, this shit is like the wack era. There is nothin'!

ThaFormula.com - Also I notice a lot of these artists that come out after a while they got no soul left in them man. It's like they just lost it...

MC Ren - Niggaz be bitches now. They first come out, they be hard, mean muggin'. You can't squeeze a smile or nothin' out these niggaz. Now you see niggaz be on MTV smilin', being happier then a muthafucka. I'm like, what happened to this nigga? This nigga was just like this, now look at him. I hate when I see niggaz in TV like that. Nigga you was just hard as a muthafucka, now you just all happy. 'Cause muthafuckas get like that when them cameras get on them niggaz. Every time smilin' and doing stupid shit thinkin' they cute and shit. Man come on dog, that shit is ridiculous man.

ThaFormula.com - Now you were the one that never did many interviews back then. So I wanted to know from your mouth how you and Eazy got started in this?

MC Ren - That nigga Eric, he was like my brother's homeboy. He used to live right around the corner from a nigga. He used to be the little nigga in the neighborhood doin' his thang. He knew I could rhyme and shit so he was trying to leave that shit alone and get into music and Dre was down with the Wrecking Cru and Dre spit at him like, "yo you can start your own label, we can do this." So Cube came in and he was under Dre at the time 'cause he was in a group called C.I.A.

ThaFormula.com - Did you know Cube at that time?

MC Ren - Nah, I didn't meet Cube 'till I came in the group really. I used to do street tapes and he used to do street tapes and used to bump his street tapes before I met him. I was with that nigga one day and we was sittin' in the car waiting for Eric to come home on his mama's street and I was like "nigga check this tape out, this nigga is harder then a muthafucka." Him and Dre and them back in the day used to make tapes and they would take shit like "My Adidas" and make it "My Rubber" and make it funny. I remember I was in the car with that nigga in my bucket and I was like nigga listen to this shit. We were two little niggaz straight out of high school. I was like "nigga this muthafucka hard right here." He was like, "nigga that's me." I told him man I been listening to your shit for like a year. So me and that nigga clicked after that..

ThaFormula.com - So what were you doing at the time Ren?

MC Ren - I was doing my little hustle on the street and I was MC'ing at the time at little house parties battlin' niggaz and shit like that. I started MC'ing in '83 in the 9th grade. When I got to the 12th grade I was about to go to the Army cause I was like, "this shit ain't even gonna crack." Plus we was from the west coast and niggaz was like, "you all ain't doing nothin, all the rappers are from the east," and shit like that. So I was fittin' to go to the army with my homeboy. I had already went to take the written test, I just had to do the other shit. I remember Eric came by one day and that's when he had "Boyz-N-The Hood" but it was just local and shit at the time.

ThaFormula.com - So you weren't down with them yet when he first did "Boyz-N-The Hood?"

MC Ren - Nah, that's how old it was. He did that shit way before that but it was just local then in the streets. When he did that he knew I could rhyme so he would come around to my mommas house and would say "I wanna check you out." So we went around there, he used to have some turntables there and equipment and shit so I started freestylin' for that nigga. He put a record on and started scratchin' while I was rappin' to the muthafucka just freestylin' for like 10 minutes.

ThaFormula.com - Was your style the same even then or did it change by the time you got on?

MC Ren - Yeah I think I kinda changed a little bit. I was more about lyrics like Run DMC kind of, you know how niggaz used to rhyme used to rhyme back then? So that nigga Eric told me to come around there I went around there and I was rappin', freestylin' and shit. He was scratchin' and cuttin' the records and shit cause he knew how to DJ and shit 'cause him and Dre used to have this little crew. I was rappin' for like 10 minutes and shit and that nigga took the tape and he went and let Dre hear the tape and Dre loved his shit. Then Eric came to me like, "I wanna sign you to a solo thing." So I wasn't even gonna be in the group NWA. He wanted to do me as a solo thang cause at that time they had did "Dopeman" and "8 Ball" right after the "Boyz-N-The Hood" thing. So Cube had wrote "Dopeman" and "8 Ball" and he wrote "Boyz-N-The Hood." So I came in and I was just gonna be the nigga that come in and do something on the side, a little solo thang. But when Cube had left, he went to school cause I guess he was figuring this shit wasn't gonna work, so he went to Arizona for like a year. Some trade school or some shit. As soon as that nigga left Eric got a deal with Priority. We was working the other shit on the street level so hard that when cube left it got so big that he got a deal for that shit. So Cube was gone and there was nobody to write his shit. So they came to me like, "nigga we need you to do this and this." So I remember I did "Radio," Eazy-Duz-It" and "Ruthless Villain." They still wasn't gonna let me in. It was just like I did those songs for that nigga. But the song "Ruthless Villain" I wrote for Eric and it was just gonna be his shit, but he couldn't say the muthafucka and he had the studio timed and it took him too long to say the vocals how I would say the vocals so Dre was like "man, just let Ren say the rap!" (Laughs). You know how niggaz be frustrated like "man just let that nigga do it 'cause he's wasting time."

ThaFormula.com - Now I got to ask you man. Was Eazy that bad in the studio as far as trying to get on beat?

MC Ren - Man, that nigga used to be bad. I ain't even gonna lie, them niggaz know it. He sound good on records but that nigga used to be terrible.

ThaFormula.com - Was it that bad man?

MC Ren - Nigga it was terrible! That nigga would be in that muthafucka and Dre would literally nigga just get a piece of paper and start doing like marks. Every time he would fuck up Dre would put a mark. Nigga his shit used to be in the hundreds. When that nigga used to do his vocals muthafuckas used to be like, "let that nigga do his shit last." When that nigga do his vocals muthafuckas used to leave. If we didn't have to do shit, wed be like "alright nigga we gone." Dre would have to sit in that muthafucka with that nigga all day. But anyway nigga that's how I got on. When I did Ruthless Villain, Boom! They was like "damn!" I remember we was in Hollywood and Eric was getting a P.O. Box and shit. Me, Eric, Dre and I think Yella was in the car. Cube was still gone to school. Dre was like, "man since its gonna take along time for you to do your solo shit, you might as well get in NWA" and at that time Arabian Prince was still in the group and shit. It was all of us and then Cube came back and that's when we started working on the "Eazy-Duz-It" album and then we did the other shit.

ThaFormula.com - So now let's get into the "NWA and the Posse" record, what was the deal with that?

MC Ren - See this how that happened. Eric first had "Boyz-N-The Hood" on Macola Records. So one day before we got the deal with Priority, he was going through Macola. So all the muthafuckas on the NWA and the posse record, that was the first shit and remember I told you I wasn't there and they already had "Dopeman," "8 Ball" and all that. That's why if you look on the back, its just a picture of Eazy, Cube, Dre, and Arabian Prince and then on the front it's me, Train and everybody, 'cause Eric was like, we doing this record, everybody come on we gonna take this album picture. So at first that shit wasn't no NWA and the Posse. It was just NWA when it was on Macola right. But when that shit blew up and we got on Priority and that shit blew up, homie just re-released it like it's NWA and the Posse and he went and got everybody that was on that album cover that had records out and let them add to it and he put it out like shady muthafuckaz do. That shit was like some wack shit and that's why we never supported that record. Muthafuckas would come up to us like yeah that "NWA and the Posse" shit and we 'd be like "man that ain't our record." That's just like some Lonzo type shit like he put out some shit after Dre left Wreckin' Cru.

ThaFormula.com - So was D.O.C. down with you guys at that time?

MC Ren - When that record came out, he was down with us and that's why they put him on there and they went and dug up some old shit that Dre did with them niggaz.

ThaFormula.com - What was Arabian Princes' involvement in everything?

MC Ren - See when I came in the group he was already in the group and the reason that he was in the group was 'cause when Eric put the group together, he used to always say "man NWA is a all-star rap group," but it really wasn't no real all stars at the time, and he was just going around trying to get niggaz that he thought would do something in his group. Like Arabian was doing shit with Egyptian Lover and that type of shit Dre with the Wrecking Cru and Cube did with C.I.A. So that's how Arabian got in doing that fast Techno type music. 'Cause at first Eric wanted NWA to do that and have that involved in it. 'Cause that was that L.A. shit too, but as we started doing our shit and doing the record, that shit didn't fit in. It was like we in here making these songs and that shit don't fit in and its like the press we getting for the shit that we making and the kind of shit we doing that shit don't fit in. To us it was like that shit is old now and it don't fit in.

ThaFormula.com - Would you consider the "Eazy-Duz-It" LP a crew album, meaning did it take every member of the crew to make that album happen?

MC Ren - Yep. It took everybody. It was just like working on a NWA album but it's just like this is Eazy's album. Cause me D.O.C., Cube, and Dre did all the writing for that nigga. Back in them days he didn't ever do no writing. Eric didn't start writing on his shit till like he did the "5150" album and shit like that.

ThaFormula.com - Yeah that shit was terrible man...

MC Ren - Yeah, see when Dre was gone that's when he started writing his own shit.

ThaFormula.com - Now what about the production of "Eazy-Duz-It?" Was everyone involved in that album?

MC Ren - Nah, that was just straight Dre. Every album was just straight Dre. It had on there produced by Dre & Yella but Yella was just like his assistant and shit. Like, "do this for me, hand me that, push that." It was all Dre with the beats. Dre would just be in there like, "we 'gon rap to this one." He was controllin' all that and that's why it was so hard.

ThaFormula.com - So the "Eazy-Duz-It" album had just dropped and everything seemed good, how were you feelin'?

MC Ren - I was feelin good cause we was about to do our NWA album. I was just happy to be down. I was just happy to be able to write on that niggaz shit and to be on the cover and little shit like that.

ThaFormula.com - Even though I get depressed at times on how Hip-Hop has turned out, I still love the fact that at least I got to witness Hip-Hop at its prime which makes me also think about how you must feel to be considered part of that prime?

MC Ren - Yeah shit is crazy man, I was just thinkin' about that shit too. The shit is crazy 'cause back then when we was doing that shit, ain't no way niggaz would of knew how that shit was gonna be big like it was. Nigga, that's the crazy part about it, that's the crazy part about it.

ThaFormula.com - Another thing that I think about from back then is when you guys recorded this, you guys were still in the streets where nowadays muthafuckas are recording from Hollywood. I'm sure after Eazy's album and even "Straight Outta Compton" that it must have felt great to walk in the hood and see everybody giving you your props?

MC Ren - Hell yeah.

ThaFormula.com - Which just shows me how things have changed. So at that point in time were you thinking of a solo album yet or were you never really thinkin' about a solo album?

MC Ren - I didn't start thinking about no solo shit 'till I did it. When Dre left that's when I started thinking of solo shit. But the original plan was we all was gonna do solo shit originally. Everybody said yo Eazy is gonna do his first, and if Cube wouldn't have left, Cube was gonna do one, then I was gonna do one and then another NWA album. That's how the whole shit was gonna go, but then after Cube left and Dre left that's the only time I really was like "yo let me do my shit," because it was to much beef going on. It was like Eric was mad with Dre and Dre was mad and I was like, "you know I'm just gonna stay neutral and just do my own shit."
ThaFormula.com - So up next after the "Eazy-Duz-It" came "Straight Outta Compton," how was it recording that?

MC Ren - It was cool man. I remember everyday we was in the studio. Go at 12 o'clock and stay there all night.

ThaFormula.com - Did you guys know what your were about to do as far as the concepts for the album?

MC Ren - Yeah, if you listen to "Straight Out of Compton," and "Fuck tha Police," them probably the only two on there that's talkin' like serious shit, but as far as them two songs go, yeah. I remember we was at Dre's apartment and we was going over "Fuck tha Police." Me, Cube, Dre all of us was there. I remember us writing it on paper. "How we gonna do this, we gonna make Fuck tha Police, we gonna make a chorus and shit going on in the song." I remember writing all this shit down in the studio. Niggaz busting their lyrics and it was like friendly competition. Muthafuckas writing their shit and a nigga hear another niggaz shit and be like, "ah man I'll be back." I remember one time we did "Still Talkin' Shit" and Cube heard everybody's shit and he was like "damn!" Man that nigga went the next day, beat everybody to the studio early in the morning and changed the shit 'cause he was like "damn." That's how it was. Niggaz would go over there and change their shit. Ask "what you got?" "Ah fuck that I gotta go change my shit." But that made that shit hard cause it was like you was on there by yourself but your really on there with a group. So them days was off the hook man.

ThaFormula.com - It seems like you had a major influence from the East in your rhyme style, did you?

MC Ren - Yeah I did. RUN DMC. Muthafuckin' LL, Whodini, and just a lot of them. I used to just try to get my delivery like them. DMC was one of my favorites. That niggaz voice was just so muthafuckin' cold.

ThaFormula.com - Did everything that was recorded for the "Eazy-Duz-It" and "Niggaz4Life" albums make the albums?

MC Ren - Nah there was shit that didn't even make it. Tight shit too man. I remember I had some tight shit for the "Niggaz4Life" album. I remember we had a gang of shit for the "Niggaz4Life" album and most of that shit didn't make it. But basically the first shit like "Straight Outta Compton" it seems like everything we did made it on that muthafucka 'cause we just did what was gonna make it on there.

ThaFormula.com - So now when "Straight Outta Compton" came out that's when all the controversy began?

MC Ren - Yeah with the "Fuck tha Police" shit and we didn't even give a fuck. Our thing was like any publicity is good publicity. Muthafuckas would be like "that's bad publicity," but we didn't give a fuck and we would tell muthafuckas on the news we don't care if y'all are doing this shit, we like it.

ThaFormula.com - Were you guys prepared for this when you did the album?

MC Ren - Nah. Shit, we didn't know that we was gonna get a letter from the FBI and all that shit. Nah, I didn't know that. But we didn't give a fuck. You gotta think man, niggaz young and we didn't care. They helped our shit sell.

ThaFormula.com - Now how were those NWA tours man when you look back?

MC Ren - Man those muthafuckas was off the chain. They was big arenas. I remember every city we went to damn near, we had to go to press conferences and shit cause muthafuckas didn't want us there. Like the community leaders and muthafuckin' fake ass gherri curl wearin' preachers and shit. All them type of muthafuckas trying to get their little limelight and publicity when there was a gang of other shit they could have been talkin' about. But we still performed. But it used to be cool man, you know all of us rollin' on the bus and shit on tour having to share rooms and shit (Laughs). Stupid shit like that. We sold out every night. When we first went on the road nigga we used to drive in vans, we couldn't even fly cause we wasn't making all that money. So we used to have to drive in vans all around the muthafuckin' West Coast doing spot dates here and there like crazy. I remember our first tour we did was with UTFO, Salt-N-Pepa and Heavy D. We opened for them and they was looking at us like who the fuck is y'all. This was before "Straight Outta Compton." They would look and Cube and Eazy with they're gherri curls and be like "who the fuck is y'all niggaz?" (Laughs). I could feel that shit back then, like some of them New York niggaz was kind of arrogant. Like "y'all ain't no true Hip-Hop," or "y'all from the West." But then when "Straight Outta Compton" came out we had our own muthafuckin' tour and everything changed. Matter fact we played the Apollo before "Straight Outta Compton" came out when "Eazy-Duz-It" I think had just came out or something or probably right before we played the Apollo with all the New York niggaz. It was like some big ass Summer jam type shit, but it was at the Apollo. Nigga we got booed, they threw shit at us. We was the only ones man and then we had to walk back downstairs and all these New York niggaz looking at us cause they got they monitors down in them muthafuckas. They lookin' at us and I was like man, nigga you ever been somewhere where you just wanna disappear? (Laughs). Everybody lookin' at y'all like, "damn y'all got booed." But I remember after that when I had dropped "Kizz My Black Azz" and I went back to New York. I did like two shows at the Apollo and that shit was off the hook. And then I heard Cube went back when he did hid first album and muthafuckas went crazy. I remember somebody told me that that niggaz said when he was out there he was like, "yeah we came here and we booed the first time, but I'm about to rock this muthafcuka," and them muthafuckas went crazy. But it was a whole 180. Nigga I remember when we first went to New York which was when "Rebel without a Pause" came out when KDAY used to be bumpin' it. And when our shit, "Straight Outta Compton" came out, I remember we went to New York probably like a month later or some shit like that for some press shit. At that time the record was kind of getting big and shit nigga, and I remember Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad was up in the club and nigga knew all our names and shit. I was like "what the fuck?" and I was trippin' 'cause he was talkin' to Dre and shit 'cause you know how the two beat muthafuckas always find each other. I seen them two niggaz talkin' and Hank Shocklee was laughin' like "I can't believe y'all niggaz are here!" Dre was pointing at everybody I remember. He was like "this is so and so," and Hank was like "yeah I know, this is Ren, this is Eazy." Nigga he knew who I was and that tripped me out. I was like, "this nigga be fuckin' with PE and they got this hot ass shit, and this nigga know us?"

ThaFormula.com - Yeah and at that time the only producers who could fuck with Dre was the Bomb Squad…

MC Ren - Exactly and that's why Cube went to those muthafuckas.

ThaFormula.com - That's why I feel that was the only move Cube could have done and was the smartest…

MC Ren - Yeah. No other producer could have just came with no shit to just keep him like that. He went to the right muthafuckin' spot.

ThaFormula.com - So know at this point in time had you, Dre, Cube or Yella seen any money?

MC Ren - Nope. Hell Nah!!

ThaFormula.com - So you guys are having fun and all but when did the first problems start coming? 'Cause I know it's always about the money…

MC Ren - Yeah, I remember we was in muthafuckin' Arizona. Cube came to me and was says "Jerry Heller is coming up here and they want us to sign a new contract, you know he is taking advantage of muthafuckas cause we don't Know." How you just gonna pop up on a nigga with contracts and no lawyers or nothing? So that lets you know that that muthafucka was a snake. So anyway, Cube told me "I'm not signing that shit." He came to me and was like, "don't sign it." This the niggaz exact words. He said, "I could say I ain't gonna sign it and I'm just one person and the shit can still go down, but if you say it, me and you together then can't nothing happen if me and you both don't sign." I remember we were supposed to sign the shit and get 70 G'z. I ain't never seen 70 G'z know what I'm saying? So Cube was like, "I ain't signing it." So Cube didn't sign that shit and there was a little animosity. Everybody was like, "why didn't he sign it?" Nigga I had never seen no 70 G'z before in my life," and I was like, "Eric grew up right around the corner with me," I was like "this is my nigga, he brought me in and I'ma take this 70 G'z 'cause I ain't gonna get this shit nowhere else."

ThaFormula.com - So what was Dre thinking at this time?

MC Ren - Dre took it. He took the money. So Cube left. I signed, Dre signed, Yella signed.

ThaFormula.com - So did you tell Cube that you were gonna sign?

MC Ren - I think I told that nigga something like "man I ain't got no money, I ain't got no paper, I ain't got nothing." I was like "nigga I been rappin' for nothing this long and nigga fittin' to give me 70 G'z?" Shit and this was 1988, I was only 18.

ThaFormula.com - So that was basically the only reason Cube left right?

MC Ren - Yeah.

ThaFormula.com - 'Cause a lot of rumors got started about him leaving also because his solo album didn't come up next…

MC Ren - Nah, it wasn't no ego shit like that. It wasn't even like that. It was because he was like, "nigga we should get more money." He saw what I didn't see. I should have seen it. He was like, "nigga we need to get more money," because me and him used to always talk to Eric and say we wanted more money. 'Cause me and Cube used to get less 'cause we was the rappers and he would say, 'cause y'all not doing the beats." We would be like, "why they getting more then us?" "'Cause they doing the beats," he would say. Why Yella get more than us? 'Cause he doing this to help Dre. We was like, "but he ain't doing what we doing?"

ThaFormula.com - So you and Cube were making less then everybody else?

MC Ren - Everybody, and so that's the way it all happened. That nigga left.

ThaFormula.com - What were your thoughts when he left?

MC Ren - I was thinking young and stupid 'cause I was only like 18 or 19. I was Thinking that it's fucked up, that nigga shouldn't have left because we had a publicist at the time. She use to be like anytime interviews would pop up she would call Cube. She wouldn't call nobody else but Cube. So when he left the group she ended up being his manager so we felt that she had that shit planned all along. Cause Eric used to always complain to Priority like "why do she always call him for the interviews?" That bitch had probably another plan. Matter of fact, she started doing all his "Friday" movies with him and all of that. So there was animosity cause niggaz was thinkin' this shit was planned. So the beef just formed out of that shit. Matter of fact me and him never really had no beef. 'Cause even when he left the group, he went to New York and he would call me from New York when he was working with the Bomb Squad. Me and him was supposed to do a song for his album called "The Villain and the Gangsta." He was like, "man we gonna do this song," but we couldn't do the mutherfucka 'cause them niggaz got all mad and it was like all that animosity them niggaz had. It was like, "man that nigga this, and that" and then he stopped talkin' to me and we stopped talkin'.

ThaFormula.com - What did Dre think about this at the time?

MC Ren - Dre was mad that nigga left 'cause Dre brought him in so he was mad and that's why when Cube had his record he was on his homegirl Dee Barns show "Pump It Up" one night. I didn't have no beef with the nigga. It was all cool and everything but them niggaz was kind of hot and Cube said some shit on there like "I got all suckaz "100 miles and Runnin'" or some shit. He said that and we was like, "Ohh!!"

ThaFormula.com - So she set that show up with both of you (NWA and Ice Cube) on it without you even knowing right?

MC Ren - Yeah we didn't even know. She could have came to us and said "we want you all on the show," or "we want to do something," but she just did that shit for her ratings I guess, and that nigga outspoken like he was back then and said "I got all these suckaz 100 Miles and Runnin'" and we was like "what!" When he did that niggaz was hot and then he wanted to use on "Jackin' for Beats" when it comes on and says "Gimme that beat fool," he had our shit on there originally from the" Niggaz4Life" album. You know the "Prelude" beat, he had that on there first but since he was on Priority and our "Niggaz4Llife" album was fittin' to come out, we told Brian Turner 'cause he let us hear it first. We was in his office and he said, "I want you all to hear this song." He let us hear it and we was like "hell nah!" I remember Dre was like "fuck that, he can't use our beat" cause Dre made that beat. He was "like this man ain't gonna use our beat and be clowning us" you know what I'm saying? So Dre told him "if this nigga uses our beat, we ain't fuckin' with you," and Brian Turner told that nigga he couldn't use it 'cause he knew that the "Niggaz4Life" album was coming and he knew like "I can't let Cube use this muthafucka cause NWA is hot and they ain't gonna finish this muthafuckin' album if I let him do this."

ThaFormula.com - But in between all this you all did the "100 Miles and Runnin'" EP and you knew now that it was your time to step up. How did you feel about that?

MC Ren - When that nigga left, I knew I had to pick my shit up 'cause Dre wasn't really no rapper. He wasn't really no hell of a rapper back then and shit. He just would fill in. But when Cube left he started rapping more, but I always knew I had to pick it up. I was writing my shit, Eric's shit, Dre was helping write Eric shit, 'cause when Cube left we still had me, D.O.C. and Dre.

ThaFormula.com - So Dre actually wrote his shit?

MC Ren - Yeah, he wrote some of his shit. He write some of his shit and some of his shit he don't write. You can tell shit he writes. D.O.C. would write a lot of Dre's shit too. You could tell when you hear a lot of Dre shit if DOC wrote it.

ThaFormula.com - So even through all this and when you dissed Cube on the "Real Niggaz" track, were you still cool with Cube?

MC Ren - Nah, nah hell nah. Nah, Nah, Nah, I wasn't cool with that nigga at that time. It's crazy 'cause I went out on the "Up In Smoke Tour" with that nigga and me and that nigga was talkin' about them disses we did and I said "yeah nigga, I didn't even get a chance to do a whole verse on your ass." I said "nigga I would have got you!" He looked at me like "yeah ok." I said "alright nigga, you got a verse and some shit on me, but I never got a verse or song."

ThaFormula.com - Now when that dropped and Cube dropped his shit a lot of people thought NWA was through. "Niggaz4Life" hadn't dropped yet and I remember a lot of people were ready to call you guys over, did you guys hear any of this?

MC Ren - A little bit 'cause nigga, that was motivating us 'cause we was like "niggaz think we ain't gonna do shit 'cause Cube left." That was the first thing we thought. But them muthafuckas had to eat all they words though cause "Niggaz4Life" was a classic muthafuckin' album man. But I do be wishing Cube could have been on it. Can you imagine if that nigga was on that album?

ThaFormula.com - I don't know. I never thought those beats were meant for Cube. I thought that it was as good as it could have been and that no one ever rode a Dre beat like you which "Alwayz Into Something" proved…

MC Ren - Yeah that's my cut right there.

ThaFormula.com - And I loved the "Prelude" track 'cause you always dissed wack rappers and sell outs who did wack love songs…

MC Ren - And I'ma keep dissin' their wack asses.
ThaFormula.com - So how were you guys feelin' after "Niggaz4Life" dropped?

MC Ren - We was feelin' cool.  We was supposed to go on tour for that shit.  We was planning out a "Niggaz4Life" tour.  We were getting our props ready and had muthafuckas coming to build our stage, and that's when Dre left.

ThaFormula.com - Were you guys still kicking it at this time or was everybody doing their own thing?

MC Ren - We was cool.  It's like one day Dre came to me and said, somebody I know wanna holla at us because we ain't getting paid right.  So I remember going down there to Solar records.  At that time Dre and Suge was kickin' it real tough and shit.  Suge told Dre about this dude at Solar and I remember going down there and meeting with them, and that's when Dre left.

ThaFormula.com - What did you say when Dre took you down to Solar?

MC Ren - From what I saw, I just saw one nigga trying to get niggaz to come over with him.  I mean I had seen alot more money by then.  I still wasn't getting what I was supposed to be getting, but I wasn't going to go into another fucked up situation.  My street smarts said, fuck this.  This is a worse situation.  That's why I didn't do it.  Then when Dre left, Eric was saying we still gonna do NWA.  I'm happy I didn't go along with the shit.  He said were gonna do the NWA album and we gonna get some more producers.  He was saying Yella, Hutch and some new people are gonna produce it.  I told him an NWA album is not gonna work without Dre doing the beats.  I wasn't about to play myself though.  Cube left, Dre left.  The beat mutherfuckers and one of the hardest lyricists in the group.  We ain't got shit.  I wasn't about to rap over any niggaz beat back then, because you know niggaz beats back then was wack.  I mean how you gonna go from the top muthafucka to that.  When I told Eazy I wasn't gonna do the NWA album, me and him didn't talk for like a year or two.  Probably longer then that.  When Dre was doing the first Chronic album, I was still talking to Dre.  I would go to his house and be kicking it.  That's why Snoop says in the Intro of the Chronic, "What up Ren."  Cause I used to be there kicking it with niggaz.  I told Erick and Dre that the problem was between them and that I didn't have nothing to do with that.  I'm not about to be dissin' neither of you.  That's why when Eazy was dissin' Dre, I wasn't in on that and Dre dissin' him, I wasn't in on that.  I was just neutral.

thaFormula.com - So I'm sure you heard the Chronic before it dropped.  How did you feel about it?

MC Ren - I thought the shit was tight.  I remember when it first came out.  Erick was in the studio going through the first Chronic album saying, this shit is wack.  All the little groupies around him were saying yeah that shit is wack.  I said, nigga this shit is hard.

thaFormula.com - So there was no way you could have been on the Chronic?

MC Ren - Yeah, because of all that shit that was going on. 

thaFormula.com - So when did you decide to do your first EP, "Kiss My Black Azz"?

MC Ren - When I saw the group wasn't gonna do no more shit.  So I went and got Bobcat.  When we was on tour during the NWA days, he was on tour with LL and we used to always kick it back in them days.  So we hooked up and did that shit.

thaFormula.com - It did pretty good for you right?

MC Ren - Yeah it went platinum and shit.  I got that muthafuckin plaque. 

thaFormula.com - What made you decide to do an EP and not an LP?

MC Ren - Cause I wanted to test the waters dog.  I didn't wanna do an album and have muthafuckas not feelin' me.  So I did the EP to see how muthafuckas react to it. 

thaFormula.com - Did the death of DJ Train really fuck you up alot cause you guys used to always roll together?

MC Ren - Yep.  Me and him went to high school together.  When I told him I rapped, he told me that he was a DJ.  So I went to his house and this muthafucka started doing shit on the turntable I had never seen.  He was pickin' the muthafuckas up at like a 45 degree angle and the needle was even jumpin'.  So when Erick signed JJ Fad they needed a DJ.  They weren't hard or nothing, but Train was hard.  I remember Train was in the 12th grade and their shit started jumpin' before our shit.  He was on the Run's House tour flying in and out of town.  That nigga was tight as a muthafucka man.  That was my nigga all the way from high school. 

thaFormula.com - What exactly did happen to Train man?

MC Ren - His house caught on fire.  He thought his son was still in the house and his son had left.  His son momma had came and got him.  So he was thinking his son was still in that muthafucka.  He went back in after he got everybody out thinking his son was still in there, but he wasn't.  So he went in there and got all that smoke caught up in him.  That was some wack ass shit.

thaFormula.com - Was he a big reason that you started changing up your style after the EP and going towards the more righteous path?

MC Ren - Yeah.  He would give me tapes on Egypt and tell me we were gonna go there.  So yeah my shit did start changing.  I went into the Nation of Islam in 1993 and got out in 1995.  Went to Egypt in 1995.  Me and Train was supposed to go together and he couldn't make it, so I said fuck it, Imma go anyway.

thaFormula.com - How was going to Egypt?

MC Ren - It was the shit.  I went out there for about  two and half weeks.

thaFormula.com - Now your album was supposed to be called "Life Sentence."  Was it because of that situation that you changed the title?

MC Ren - Yeah. 

thaFormula.com - How did you feel about the "Shock of the Hour" album and how did that do for you?

MC Ren - Back then it sold like 480,000 copies when E was alive.  It was cool.   The first side of that muthafucka I recorded before I even got into the Nation.  If you listen to it you can tell.  The second half of that album is when I was in the nation.

thaFormula.com - I have to ask you this man before I forget.  When Cube dropped "No Vaseline" what did you guys think about it?

MC Ren - Nigga I was ready to mash.  Niggaz was mad.  Like "oh, this nigga wanna do it like this."  I was mad.  That was the greatest sneak attack ever. 

thaFormula.com - Would you say that he won that battle?

MC Ren - Nah he didn't win!  How he gonna win and I ain't put my gloves on.  That's like that movie Ali when he's in the car with Joe Frazier saying yeah, but you ain't the real champ.  I didn't get my chance.  I will never get my chance cause me and him are cool as a muthafucka.  Even if we did, it probably wouldn't be like it would have been then. 

thaFormula.com - Did you guys feel it on the streets as far as people fucking with you about it?

MC Ren - Yep, everything.  I remember I went somewhere to this party at a hall and muthafuckas was playing it, and I remember trippin' on them telling them to take that shit off (laughs).  I remember one time I was in Compton where my homeboy was doing a video show for this cable station, and this punk ass nigga was trying to play that in the background.  You know them jealous ass niggaz and shit, but fuck them.  We got the last laugh though cause all of us is cool now.

thaFormula.com - Is it true that Dre didn't produce that whole first Above The Law album?

MC Ren - Alot of that shit was done before Dre touched it.  Hutch did alot of that shit before Dre even came and sat down.  We was on tour and Laylaw brought them in.  He had they shit and we used to listen to it when we was on the "Straight Outta Compton" tour.  So alot of the songs on that first album were already done.  Hutch did that shit along time ago. 

thaFormula.com - So now you dropped your EP and your solo.  At this point how are you feeling coming into your next album "Villain In Black"?

MC Ren - I was feelin' good dog.  Happy that me and Hutch hooked up.  Me and that nigga used to be in the studio damn near like everyday.  To me though, it's harder now then back then.  Now when I'm in the studio with niggaz, it's a different feelin' from back then.   

thaFormula.com - So at this time were you and Eazy not speaking still?

MC Ren - Yeah.  That's why he wasn't on none of my albums and why I wasn't really on his shit.  He knew we didn't have shit to say to each other, but he knew he still could make money off my shit.  The only thing was that after we had the fall out, when my records came out, they never pushed them like they should have pushed them.  Cause my "Shock The Hour" went to number 1 on the Billboard Charts, but I didn't get no Gold or no Platinum Plaque.  If you go number 1, come on.  My shit was number 1 all around everywhere.  They didn't promote it and I think it had alot to do with the shit I was sayin'.  It scared alot of muthafuckas. It felt like a nigga got blacklisted or something.  That's the vibe I got from niggaz.  It just seems like nobody wanted to talk about that record.  So what could I do. 

thaFormula.com - What do you think Tupac would say if he saw all these Tupac clones runnin' around?

MC Ren - Come on dog.  If Tupac was alive, he would be giving all these niggaz hell, 50 Cent included.  INCLUDED!  All of them niggaz would catch it.

thaFormula.com - So how did you feel about "Villain In Black"?

MC Ren - It was cool.  The only thing is my budgets kept getting smaller, smaller, and smaller.  They wouldn't give me the paper I needed.  They was looking at it like if he don't want to talk to us and don't want to do this then fuck it.  That's how it went.  But if I would have helped them diss Dre, man I probably would have got all kinds of shit.

thaFormula.com – So that's why BG Knockout and Dresta kept getting promoted?

MC Ren - Yep.  If you see, they got promoted more then I did and I was there for the longest.  Fake ass company.

thaFormula.com - So after that came your last album "Ruthless For Life".  It seemed like you were out of it on that album...

MC Ren - Yeah I was.  I ain't even gonna lie, I was.  Nigga was going through shit.  All kind of problems.  Nigga was out of it on that album.  I'm more into it now then I was in that time.

thaFormula.com - So in between "Ruthless For Life" and now you just disappeared.  What happened man?

MC Ren - Dog, I was just chillin' with my family, still working on music.  I left Ruthless and I just didn't want to be in one of them situations again like that.  So I just started making music.  I did a little independent film.  So just little shit like that trying to stay busy and get shit crackin' again.  It wasn't my fault though.  A nigga was going through shit making other transitions, then the game changed.  So when I came back, the game had changed drastically.  Muthafuckas was dead, muthafuckas ain't working here, gone.  Shit wasn't the same.  But I just realized that that's how life is and things are gonna always change. 

thaFormula.com - So when you got out of Ruthless did you approach other labels?

MC Ren - Yeah.  They was saying that they wasn't trying to fuck with me.  The sound that I was giving them, they didn't want that shit.  They wanted more radio friendly type shit.  They don't wanna hear like a hard muthafucka with lyrics, they wanna hear some dancing shit.  They wanna hear a beat come on that they can get on Power 106.  They wanted that happy shit and I ain't got that shit.  I couldn't make that if I tried.  I would play myself.  I love Run DMC.  But they even went through that shit when they made that record "Pause."  You never thought you would see them dancing like that.  To go from the Adidas and derbies and all that dope shit to be with white hats and big medallions dancing.  Come on man.  But that's the game.  Even legendary muthafuckas like them get confused.  You just got to realize that we are legends in this shit.  We can't be what we used to be, but we still here.

thaFormula.com - So it took many years but you finally got back to working with Dre on Chronic 2001.  How did that come about?

MC Ren - My homeboy said that Dre wants you to come down, so I went down there and did it.  I was rappin' on the muthafucka.  I was on another song bustin', but he took me off of it and put this other nigga on it.  There was a dude originally on there, but when I came, I got on there.  Then niggaz told me that the reason they took me off was because the nigga that was on there was crying about it.

thaFormula.com - That's wack...

MC Ren - You know man. Little bitch shit.  Nigga took me off and shit.

thaFormula.com - After you guys all recorded "Chin Check", what happened with the NWA project?

MC Ren - Ain't nothing really happened and shit.  Cube was doing his movie and wanted us to do that shit.  Then we did "Hello" for his album and we were supposed to work on the NWA project on the road, but it never went down.

thaFormula.com - I remember when you guys did Farm Club on TV.  I remember Dre's expression when you said you wanted to tour and record the new album.  I knew from seeing Dre's expression that that shit was never going to happen.

MC Ren - It was on Dre.  We was ready.  Me and Cube was ready, but we weren't gonna keep begging this dude to do no record.  We had a studio out there to do it, but it didn't happen so fuck it.  I don't give a fuck.  I do but I don't cause it's over with now.  I ain't fittin' to cry over that shit.  "Chin Check" was alright, but "Hello" was better to me.  It was better but it just wasn't like it used to be.  Muthafuckas be having a gang of niggaz now in the studios.  When we used to record back in the day nobody would really be there, only a few people.
 

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IS DETOX NEXT? Don't think so.
 

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #52 on: November 14, 2007, 11:57:54 AM »
now that you're posting all these interviews here, i might as well post the more recent interviews:

Quote
The studio-obsessed producer has left his mark on Eminem and 50 Cent, to name-drop a few. And he's not about to rush his final solo CD.

By Robert Hilburn, Special to The Times
September 23, 2007


"We go until it happens," rap producer Dr. Dre says about all the time he spends in the recording studio searching for hits, once as long as 79 hours in a single stretch. "When the ideas are coming," says the man who is one of the half-dozen most influential producers of the modern pop era, "I don't stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn't come along all the time."

Some hip-hop fans, however, must be wondering if this particular train isn't off the track. Dre (real name: Andre Young) has been working on his third solo album, "Detox," for nearly eight years, a time frame that invites uncomfortable comparison with such earlier pop music train wrecks as Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and Axl Rose. All three were fabulously successful artists who found it so hard to live up to their own expectations that they each ran into creative paralysis.

But there are differences between Dre and the others, he and those close to him say. The 42-year-old Compton native hasn't just been working on his own album all these years.

As a producer and head of Aftermath Entertainment, Dre has also contributed to albums by Eminem, 50 Cent, the Game and others. Plus, he has "mixed" tracks -- fine-tuning the musical dynamics -- for more than a dozen other artists, including Gwen Stefani, Eve and Mary J. Blige.

Dre will now devote two months to working on Eminem's new album. "We'll be trying to get his thing done and work on a few things on my own project," Dre says.

It's an exhausting pace and it's possible only because of what Dre calls his obsession with the studio.

To achieve his level of success -- Dre has put his seductive hip-hop stamp on albums that have taken in more than $1 billion worldwide -- you obviously need musical talent.

"Dre is 'the Natural,' " says Interscope Records chief Jimmy Iovine. "Lots of producers have hits, but he does far more than that. He's a creator who has moved popular culture three times . . . with gangsta rap, G-funk and Eminem."

Yet the more you talk to Dre, the more you realize that another key element has been a mental toughness that enabled him to walk away from fast-lane excesses and a runaway ego.

Dre's greatest gift, in fact, may be the strong will that has helped him to recognize the most important things in his life -- the recording studio, his family and, most recently, weight training -- and strip away everything that doesn't serve those priorities.

In the early '90s, Dre was being hailed as the new king of hip-hop for defining gangsta rap with N.W.A and then expanding rap's mainstream appeal with the alluring G-funk style that combined melodic, old-school R&B and hard-core hip-hop sensibilities.

But amid the sudden fame, Dre appeared to be spending as much time partying and in court as he did in the studio. The turning point came after he served time in jail in 1995 for violating the probation he received after breaking another rap producer's jaw in 1992.

He jettisoned the bad behavior and, among other things, severed ties with trouble-plagued Death Row Records, signing a multimillion-dollar deal with Interscope Records and the Universal Music Group that resulted in Dre's Aftermath label.

The accompanying hoopla and dollar signs led to another hazardous period. After closing the deal, Dre went on a signing spree, convinced he could turn out hits with virtually anyone. He admits the move took a personal and professional toll.

"When we started Aftermath, we had something like 20 artists and it was driving me crazy," the 6-foot-1 producer said on the patio of his English-style country estate in the West San Fernando Valley. "I couldn't sit down and focus on any of it, plus it was doubly hard because you ended up crushing these people's dreams when you had to let them go."

On the strength of his name, "Dr. Dre Presents . . . The Aftermath," a 1996 album, was certified platinum (1 million sold), but it had little lasting effect. The humbling experience taught Dre that even with his talents he, as a producer, needs quality artists and a top support crew to make noteworthy records. Aftermath too went through a stripping back process. Its roster now includes fewer than a dozen artists.

"People are always coming up to me, thinking I've got some magic wand that can make them a star and I want to tell them that no one can do that," he says. "Making hit records is not that easy. But it took me time to realize that myself."

Now, Dre is planning another dramatic move, one designed in part to give him even more time in the studio. The long-awaited "Detox," he says, will be his final solo album.

Though claims of "final albums" have often proved to be as short-lived as farewell tours, you sense a burden lifting as Dre talks about saying good-bye to the solo career. He loves being in the studio, whether working on his songs or someone else's. But he doesn't enjoy the other duties that go along with a solo career, including interviews, live shows and other promotional activities. By eliminating all that, Dre is further sharpening his focus on his studio obsession.

"The actual making of a record is the most exciting part of this business," he says. "I don't make records so I can sit down afterward and listen to them. I make them so other people can sit down and listen to them."

Talk about hits

DRE appears as relaxed as can be on the grounds of his gated mansion on a weekday afternoon, refreshed from a couple of hours at the gym and looking forward to going into the studio later in the day. You'd never know from his easygoing manner that the rap kingpin dislikes interviews so much that this is his first one in three years.

He's a wonderful storyteller who delights in the surprising details behind some of his hits. At the moment, he's in the middle of a story about how he found Snoop Dogg, whose silky vocal style contributed greatly to the G-funk classic, "Nuthin but a 'G' Thang."

Dre was at a bachelor party in the early '90s when he heard Snoop's voice on an amateur tape. He liked the way Snoop rhymed over the beats and invited him into the studio.

"I was mainly interested in how he responded to directions," Dre continues. "That's always an important test with me. Talent gets you in the door, but there are other things I consider, like, 'Do I want to work with this guy? Can we click? Can we laugh and talk in the studio?' If not, I'd rather work with someone else."

Seriously? Would Dre really pass up a sure-fire hit if it was brought into the studio by an absolute jerk?

Dre pauses briefly at the question, then laughs. "Well," he says, finally. "I'd probably take the song and then have him sit out in the lobby while I worked on it."

It's the music that matters

DRE has been talking freely for nearly 90 minutes about the studio. The only pauses are to talk to Nicole, his wife of 11 years, about spending the weekend with their kids at their house in Malibu.

For Dre, spending as much time as possible in the studio is as important as keeping your ears open, a point that leads to the matter of interviews. Nothing personal, he says, they're just another distraction.

Dre was blessed with a gift for music, a mom who encouraged him to pursue that gift rather than gangs and an aunt who just happened to live down the street from another young hip-hop fan, O'Shea Jackson, who adopted the professional name Ice Cube.

"I always loved the way music made me feel," Dre says, sipping water from a bottle. "I did sports at school and all, but when I got home, it was just music. Everybody in my neighborhood loved music. I could jump the back fence and be in the park where there were ghetto blasters everywhere."

By the time Dre and Ice Cube hooked up in the mid-'80s, both had spent countless hours honing their skills. Dre, four years older, was a master of turntables, his confidence boosted by all the nights he played records for the dance crowd at the Eve After Dark nightclub in Compton. Cube's forte was lyrics.

After they joined N.W.A, Dre supplied the sonic explosiveness, while Cube wrote the key raps for "Straight Outta Compton," the alternately angry and witty late-'80s album that made gangsta rap a sensation. The success of N.W.A showed Dre the importance of following your instincts and not worrying about the latest trends.

"I mean, think about it," he says. "We couldn't have done anything more unlikely in music business terms. We were making a record that we knew no one would play on the radio because of the language and that no major label would even release."

Dre followed his instincts again with 1992's "The Chronic" by using live instruments when the vogue in rap was building tracks around turntable dynamics and "samples" from old recordings. "There is some sampling on my records and a lot of what I call replays, where I'd have musicians come in the studio and replay the sample from the original record," he says. "But mainly, we'd come up with our own music."

Dre's favorite moment during the making of "The Chronic" may have been the time Snoop Dogg phoned the studio from jail while Dre happened to be working on "Nuthin' but." "I can't even remember why he was in jail, but I thought his voice would be perfect for the song," Dre says, smiling. "So, I told him to stay on the line while I duct-taped the receiver of the phone to the microphone. That's how he did vocal for our demo for ' "G" Thang.' I wish I could find that demo now. You could hear all the jail sounds in the background. It was crazy."

Fifteen years after that recording session, Dre still seems to savor the moment -- as much as the success of the record itself, which was named single of the decade by Spin magazine.

For Dre, a hit record starts with a hit sound, which sounds simple. But the search is what requires those long hours in the studio. The producer normally heads into the studio around 3 p.m. weekdays, the weekends being reserved for the family and for his hobbies, which include sports and photography. Because the studio in Sherman Oaks is like a second home, Dre likes the atmosphere to be as comfortable and relaxed as possible.

"One of the most important things for a producer is to realize you don't know everything," says Dre, whose studio techniques are largely self-taught. "I love having people in the studio that I can feed off and who can feed off each other."

When putting together a track, lyrics and themes are important, he says, but you've first got to catch a listener's ear with a melody or a beat. To create that beat, he either starts from scratch or builds on something he heard on an old recording, which he did when he worked a few seconds of Leon Haywood's "I Want'a Do Something Freaky to You" into "Nuthin' but." He used a piano riff from Joe Cocker's "Woman to Woman" to jump-start "California Love," the spectacular 1996 single he made with the late Tupac Shakur.

On "California Love," Dre went into the studio in his former Chatsworth home and played a sample from the Cocker single over a drum beat. He then had some horn players come in to fill out the sound and finally stacked some strings on top.

While recording the track, Dre remembered a festive line -- "California knows how to party" -- from another song ("West Coast Poplock") and he brought in Roger Troutman, from the old Zapp band, to deliver the vocal line on the record.

As Dre recounts the process, you can imagine his head racing through ideas with the speed of a computer. Does this work? What else can I do? What's missing? Is that too much? Seeing him amid his arsenal of state-of-the-art equipment brings home the complexity of his approach.

But everything he does is rooted in the age-old search for a hook. In looking for musical ideas, Dre sometimes goes randomly through crates of old records to see if anything catches his ear, something as short as five to 10 seconds of music. Most of the time, however, he'll sit in the studio with a couple of other musicians and simply start playing, hoping one of them will come up with a key riff. Dre usually sits at a synthesizer or drum machine, joined by, say, a bassist and/or guitarist.

"It's great when everybody is working together and feels something is happening," he says about his time in the studio. "That's when it's all smiles in the studio. You don't want to see any clock or any daylight or hear any phone. You just cut yourself off from the rest of the world and make music.

"I don't necessarily even call it work. I call it fun. I even like the pressure, it makes me work all the harder if I know people out there are waiting for the record."

The quality Dre looks for in a recording artist is uniqueness -- a distinct voice that will stand out from the crowd. Sometimes the writing will catch Dre's ear, other times the rap delivery.

Dre's biggest star, Eminem, came from as far out in left field as Snoop Dogg. An intern at Interscope Records had heard Eminem on an L.A. radio show and passed a tape along to Interscope's Iovine, who in turn played it for Dre.

Dre was so excited that he got together with Eminem the next day. He was surprised to see that the young artist was white, which might have led some industry figures to think twice, given the bad name Vanilla Ice gave white rappers. But Dre swears -- holding his hand up playfully as if testifying -- he knew that Eminem had the goods.

"His writing is like no other," Dre says, "the way he puts together certain words and the way he makes certain words rhyme that to me most of the time don't even seem like they are supposed to rhyme. I also loved the fact that Eminem, I think, was setting out to be shocking. I love it as dark as it can get, and I thought the public would feel the same way."

In turn, Eminem has been lavish in his praise for the producer. "Dre showed me how to do things with my voice that I didn't know I could do," Eminem told me early in his career, such as "the way to deliver rhymes. . . . I'd do something I thought was pretty good, and he'd say, 'I think you can do it better.' "

It was Eminem who introduced Dre to 50 Cent, whose first three Aftermath albums have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. "I loved his delivery more than anything," says Dre, who produced two tracks on 50 Cent's latest CD. "He had so much authority and strength in his voice."

When it came to the Game, the Compton rapper who has become another multimillion-album seller, Dre heard something in the rapper's raw voice that reminded him of the N.W.A days. The Game's Aftermath debut, "The Documentary," was produced by Dre and 50 Cent, and it has sold more than 2.5 millioncopies in the U.S., but the Game has moved onto Interscope's sister label Geffen after a nasty, public feud with 50 Cent. There has been much speculation in hip-hop that the Game was shifted to Geffen after Dre picked 50 Cent, the larger seller, but he denies it.

"I told them, 'I love working with both you guys. I don't have a problem with either of you,' " he says. "It was more like what is going to be the best move under the circumstances. I don't even remember who came up with the idea of putting Game on Geffen, but it was absolutely not me picking 50 over him."

A little heavy lifting

DRE made a rare public appearance this month when he announced the video of the year winner on the MTV Video Music Awards telecast in Las Vegas.

For fans, the appearance was notable for two things: Dre didn't give a release date for "Detox," renewing fears that the album may be lost in some twi- light zone, and his arms and chest were notably buff.

"That's another of my obsessions," he says a few days later of the new look. "I go in the gym two to 2 1/2 hours Monday through Friday. It makes me feel better and look better."

Before Dre started on the weights about four years ago, he often went out drinking and eating after leaving the studio at night, and his weight swelled to 270 pounds. It's back to 220, and he has cut his body fat from 29% to around 6%. Playfully pumping his arms, he says, "I feel like I can kick a brick wall down now."

And what about the album release date?

"I was really hoping to have it out this year, but it's going to have to be pushed back a while because of some other things I've got to work on," he continues, sitting in the lounge of the recording studio where he spends all those hours behind the buttons. He's still two or three tracks away from calling it finished, he says.

Any second thoughts about "Detox" being his final solo album? No, he says emphatically. "I think it's time to move on," he adds, calling rap performing "a young man's game."

More important, the move will free him to pursue his long-standing interest in films. He has signed a multiyear production pact with New Line Cinema. Dre, who will team with director Philip G. Atwell, is also interested in scoring films and eventually directing.

But he expects recording studios to continue to be the center of his world, and he's optimistic.

"When I think of the future, I think a lot of Quincy Jones and how he is an inspiration," Dre says. "Look at the quality of his work over so many years. He didn't even make his best record, 'Thriller,' until he was 50.

"That gives me something to look forward to. Nothing pulls you back into the studio more than the belief that your best record is still ahead."
« Last Edit: November 14, 2007, 12:02:40 PM by Dre-Day »
 

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #53 on: November 14, 2007, 12:06:55 PM »
and the interview with GQ Magazine ( the scans aren't mine; credit goes to Misterx from aftermathmusic.com):












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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #54 on: November 14, 2007, 02:47:23 PM »
now that you're posting all these interviews here, i might as well post the more recent interviews:

Quote
The studio-obsessed producer has left his mark on Eminem and 50 Cent, to name-drop a few. And he's not about to rush his final solo CD.

By Robert Hilburn, Special to The Times
September 23, 2007


"We go until it happens," rap producer Dr. Dre says about all the time he spends in the recording studio searching for hits, once as long as 79 hours in a single stretch. "When the ideas are coming," says the man who is one of the half-dozen most influential producers of the modern pop era, "I don't stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn't come along all the time."

Some hip-hop fans, however, must be wondering if this particular train isn't off the track. Dre (real name: Andre Young) has been working on his third solo album, "Detox," for nearly eight years, a time frame that invites uncomfortable comparison with such earlier pop music train wrecks as Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and Axl Rose. All three were fabulously successful artists who found it so hard to live up to their own expectations that they each ran into creative paralysis.

But there are differences between Dre and the others, he and those close to him say. The 42-year-old Compton native hasn't just been working on his own album all these years.

As a producer and head of Aftermath Entertainment, Dre has also contributed to albums by Eminem, 50 Cent, the Game and others. Plus, he has "mixed" tracks -- fine-tuning the musical dynamics -- for more than a dozen other artists, including Gwen Stefani, Eve and Mary J. Blige.

Dre will now devote two months to working on Eminem's new album. "We'll be trying to get his thing done and work on a few things on my own project," Dre says.

It's an exhausting pace and it's possible only because of what Dre calls his obsession with the studio.

To achieve his level of success -- Dre has put his seductive hip-hop stamp on albums that have taken in more than $1 billion worldwide -- you obviously need musical talent.

"Dre is 'the Natural,' " says Interscope Records chief Jimmy Iovine. "Lots of producers have hits, but he does far more than that. He's a creator who has moved popular culture three times . . . with gangsta rap, G-funk and Eminem."

Yet the more you talk to Dre, the more you realize that another key element has been a mental toughness that enabled him to walk away from fast-lane excesses and a runaway ego.

Dre's greatest gift, in fact, may be the strong will that has helped him to recognize the most important things in his life -- the recording studio, his family and, most recently, weight training -- and strip away everything that doesn't serve those priorities.

In the early '90s, Dre was being hailed as the new king of hip-hop for defining gangsta rap with N.W.A and then expanding rap's mainstream appeal with the alluring G-funk style that combined melodic, old-school R&B and hard-core hip-hop sensibilities.

But amid the sudden fame, Dre appeared to be spending as much time partying and in court as he did in the studio. The turning point came after he served time in jail in 1995 for violating the probation he received after breaking another rap producer's jaw in 1992.

He jettisoned the bad behavior and, among other things, severed ties with trouble-plagued Death Row Records, signing a multimillion-dollar deal with Interscope Records and the Universal Music Group that resulted in Dre's Aftermath label.

The accompanying hoopla and dollar signs led to another hazardous period. After closing the deal, Dre went on a signing spree, convinced he could turn out hits with virtually anyone. He admits the move took a personal and professional toll.

"When we started Aftermath, we had something like 20 artists and it was driving me crazy," the 6-foot-1 producer said on the patio of his English-style country estate in the West San Fernando Valley. "I couldn't sit down and focus on any of it, plus it was doubly hard because you ended up crushing these people's dreams when you had to let them go."

On the strength of his name, "Dr. Dre Presents . . . The Aftermath," a 1996 album, was certified platinum (1 million sold), but it had little lasting effect. The humbling experience taught Dre that even with his talents he, as a producer, needs quality artists and a top support crew to make noteworthy records. Aftermath too went through a stripping back process. Its roster now includes fewer than a dozen artists.

"People are always coming up to me, thinking I've got some magic wand that can make them a star and I want to tell them that no one can do that," he says. "Making hit records is not that easy. But it took me time to realize that myself."

Now, Dre is planning another dramatic move, one designed in part to give him even more time in the studio. The long-awaited "Detox," he says, will be his final solo album.

Though claims of "final albums" have often proved to be as short-lived as farewell tours, you sense a burden lifting as Dre talks about saying good-bye to the solo career. He loves being in the studio, whether working on his songs or someone else's. But he doesn't enjoy the other duties that go along with a solo career, including interviews, live shows and other promotional activities. By eliminating all that, Dre is further sharpening his focus on his studio obsession.

"The actual making of a record is the most exciting part of this business," he says. "I don't make records so I can sit down afterward and listen to them. I make them so other people can sit down and listen to them."

Talk about hits

DRE appears as relaxed as can be on the grounds of his gated mansion on a weekday afternoon, refreshed from a couple of hours at the gym and looking forward to going into the studio later in the day. You'd never know from his easygoing manner that the rap kingpin dislikes interviews so much that this is his first one in three years.

He's a wonderful storyteller who delights in the surprising details behind some of his hits. At the moment, he's in the middle of a story about how he found Snoop Dogg, whose silky vocal style contributed greatly to the G-funk classic, "Nuthin but a 'G' Thang."

Dre was at a bachelor party in the early '90s when he heard Snoop's voice on an amateur tape. He liked the way Snoop rhymed over the beats and invited him into the studio.

"I was mainly interested in how he responded to directions," Dre continues. "That's always an important test with me. Talent gets you in the door, but there are other things I consider, like, 'Do I want to work with this guy? Can we click? Can we laugh and talk in the studio?' If not, I'd rather work with someone else."

Seriously? Would Dre really pass up a sure-fire hit if it was brought into the studio by an absolute jerk?

Dre pauses briefly at the question, then laughs. "Well," he says, finally. "I'd probably take the song and then have him sit out in the lobby while I worked on it."

It's the music that matters

DRE has been talking freely for nearly 90 minutes about the studio. The only pauses are to talk to Nicole, his wife of 11 years, about spending the weekend with their kids at their house in Malibu.

For Dre, spending as much time as possible in the studio is as important as keeping your ears open, a point that leads to the matter of interviews. Nothing personal, he says, they're just another distraction.

Dre was blessed with a gift for music, a mom who encouraged him to pursue that gift rather than gangs and an aunt who just happened to live down the street from another young hip-hop fan, O'Shea Jackson, who adopted the professional name Ice Cube.

"I always loved the way music made me feel," Dre says, sipping water from a bottle. "I did sports at school and all, but when I got home, it was just music. Everybody in my neighborhood loved music. I could jump the back fence and be in the park where there were ghetto blasters everywhere."

By the time Dre and Ice Cube hooked up in the mid-'80s, both had spent countless hours honing their skills. Dre, four years older, was a master of turntables, his confidence boosted by all the nights he played records for the dance crowd at the Eve After Dark nightclub in Compton. Cube's forte was lyrics.

After they joined N.W.A, Dre supplied the sonic explosiveness, while Cube wrote the key raps for "Straight Outta Compton," the alternately angry and witty late-'80s album that made gangsta rap a sensation. The success of N.W.A showed Dre the importance of following your instincts and not worrying about the latest trends.

"I mean, think about it," he says. "We couldn't have done anything more unlikely in music business terms. We were making a record that we knew no one would play on the radio because of the language and that no major label would even release."

Dre followed his instincts again with 1992's "The Chronic" by using live instruments when the vogue in rap was building tracks around turntable dynamics and "samples" from old recordings. "There is some sampling on my records and a lot of what I call replays, where I'd have musicians come in the studio and replay the sample from the original record," he says. "But mainly, we'd come up with our own music."

Dre's favorite moment during the making of "The Chronic" may have been the time Snoop Dogg phoned the studio from jail while Dre happened to be working on "Nuthin' but." "I can't even remember why he was in jail, but I thought his voice would be perfect for the song," Dre says, smiling. "So, I told him to stay on the line while I duct-taped the receiver of the phone to the microphone. That's how he did vocal for our demo for ' "G" Thang.' I wish I could find that demo now. You could hear all the jail sounds in the background. It was crazy."

Fifteen years after that recording session, Dre still seems to savor the moment -- as much as the success of the record itself, which was named single of the decade by Spin magazine.

For Dre, a hit record starts with a hit sound, which sounds simple. But the search is what requires those long hours in the studio. The producer normally heads into the studio around 3 p.m. weekdays, the weekends being reserved for the family and for his hobbies, which include sports and photography. Because the studio in Sherman Oaks is like a second home, Dre likes the atmosphere to be as comfortable and relaxed as possible.

"One of the most important things for a producer is to realize you don't know everything," says Dre, whose studio techniques are largely self-taught. "I love having people in the studio that I can feed off and who can feed off each other."

When putting together a track, lyrics and themes are important, he says, but you've first got to catch a listener's ear with a melody or a beat. To create that beat, he either starts from scratch or builds on something he heard on an old recording, which he did when he worked a few seconds of Leon Haywood's "I Want'a Do Something Freaky to You" into "Nuthin' but." He used a piano riff from Joe Cocker's "Woman to Woman" to jump-start "California Love," the spectacular 1996 single he made with the late Tupac Shakur.

On "California Love," Dre went into the studio in his former Chatsworth home and played a sample from the Cocker single over a drum beat. He then had some horn players come in to fill out the sound and finally stacked some strings on top.

While recording the track, Dre remembered a festive line -- "California knows how to party" -- from another song ("West Coast Poplock") and he brought in Roger Troutman, from the old Zapp band, to deliver the vocal line on the record.

As Dre recounts the process, you can imagine his head racing through ideas with the speed of a computer. Does this work? What else can I do? What's missing? Is that too much? Seeing him amid his arsenal of state-of-the-art equipment brings home the complexity of his approach.

But everything he does is rooted in the age-old search for a hook. In looking for musical ideas, Dre sometimes goes randomly through crates of old records to see if anything catches his ear, something as short as five to 10 seconds of music. Most of the time, however, he'll sit in the studio with a couple of other musicians and simply start playing, hoping one of them will come up with a key riff. Dre usually sits at a synthesizer or drum machine, joined by, say, a bassist and/or guitarist.

"It's great when everybody is working together and feels something is happening," he says about his time in the studio. "That's when it's all smiles in the studio. You don't want to see any clock or any daylight or hear any phone. You just cut yourself off from the rest of the world and make music.

"I don't necessarily even call it work. I call it fun. I even like the pressure, it makes me work all the harder if I know people out there are waiting for the record."

The quality Dre looks for in a recording artist is uniqueness -- a distinct voice that will stand out from the crowd. Sometimes the writing will catch Dre's ear, other times the rap delivery.

Dre's biggest star, Eminem, came from as far out in left field as Snoop Dogg. An intern at Interscope Records had heard Eminem on an L.A. radio show and passed a tape along to Interscope's Iovine, who in turn played it for Dre.

Dre was so excited that he got together with Eminem the next day. He was surprised to see that the young artist was white, which might have led some industry figures to think twice, given the bad name Vanilla Ice gave white rappers. But Dre swears -- holding his hand up playfully as if testifying -- he knew that Eminem had the goods.

"His writing is like no other," Dre says, "the way he puts together certain words and the way he makes certain words rhyme that to me most of the time don't even seem like they are supposed to rhyme. I also loved the fact that Eminem, I think, was setting out to be shocking. I love it as dark as it can get, and I thought the public would feel the same way."

In turn, Eminem has been lavish in his praise for the producer. "Dre showed me how to do things with my voice that I didn't know I could do," Eminem told me early in his career, such as "the way to deliver rhymes. . . . I'd do something I thought was pretty good, and he'd say, 'I think you can do it better.' "

It was Eminem who introduced Dre to 50 Cent, whose first three Aftermath albums have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. "I loved his delivery more than anything," says Dre, who produced two tracks on 50 Cent's latest CD. "He had so much authority and strength in his voice."

When it came to the Game, the Compton rapper who has become another multimillion-album seller, Dre heard something in the rapper's raw voice that reminded him of the N.W.A days. The Game's Aftermath debut, "The Documentary," was produced by Dre and 50 Cent, and it has sold more than 2.5 millioncopies in the U.S., but the Game has moved onto Interscope's sister label Geffen after a nasty, public feud with 50 Cent. There has been much speculation in hip-hop that the Game was shifted to Geffen after Dre picked 50 Cent, the larger seller, but he denies it.

"I told them, 'I love working with both you guys. I don't have a problem with either of you,' " he says. "It was more like what is going to be the best move under the circumstances. I don't even remember who came up with the idea of putting Game on Geffen, but it was absolutely not me picking 50 over him."

A little heavy lifting

DRE made a rare public appearance this month when he announced the video of the year winner on the MTV Video Music Awards telecast in Las Vegas.

For fans, the appearance was notable for two things: Dre didn't give a release date for "Detox," renewing fears that the album may be lost in some twi- light zone, and his arms and chest were notably buff.

"That's another of my obsessions," he says a few days later of the new look. "I go in the gym two to 2 1/2 hours Monday through Friday. It makes me feel better and look better."

Before Dre started on the weights about four years ago, he often went out drinking and eating after leaving the studio at night, and his weight swelled to 270 pounds. It's back to 220, and he has cut his body fat from 29% to around 6%. Playfully pumping his arms, he says, "I feel like I can kick a brick wall down now."

And what about the album release date?

"I was really hoping to have it out this year, but it's going to have to be pushed back a while because of some other things I've got to work on," he continues, sitting in the lounge of the recording studio where he spends all those hours behind the buttons. He's still two or three tracks away from calling it finished, he says.

Any second thoughts about "Detox" being his final solo album? No, he says emphatically. "I think it's time to move on," he adds, calling rap performing "a young man's game."

More important, the move will free him to pursue his long-standing interest in films. He has signed a multiyear production pact with New Line Cinema. Dre, who will team with director Philip G. Atwell, is also interested in scoring films and eventually directing.

But he expects recording studios to continue to be the center of his world, and he's optimistic.

"When I think of the future, I think a lot of Quincy Jones and how he is an inspiration," Dre says. "Look at the quality of his work over so many years. He didn't even make his best record, 'Thriller,' until he was 50.

"That gives me something to look forward to. Nothing pulls you back into the studio more than the belief that your best record is still ahead."

+1

for this one man. really good shit

-T

 
Fee Fie Foe Fum; somethin' stank and I want some.

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #55 on: November 14, 2007, 07:08:58 PM »


Quote
"When I think of the future, I think a lot of Quincy Jones and how he is an inspiration," Dre says. "Look at the quality of his work over so many years. He didn't even make his best record, 'Thriller,' until he was 50.

"That gives me something to look forward to. Nothing pulls you back into the studio more than the belief that your best record is still ahead."
Damn!!!!!
It ain't happenin, Bibles I'm still packin them
And jackin demons wit them 44 magnums" T-Bone

 

Dre-Day

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #56 on: November 16, 2007, 12:11:55 PM »
Quote
Then I came back because doing records with Dre is like going to school, because if you sit and you watch, and you look and you learn, the guy is teaching you how to make great records. Now with this new record I made, I'm only doing what Dre would have did, and I used my own judgment. 

ThaFormula.com - Sometimes we sit around and think about what you and Dre would have come out with after "No One Can Do It Better" if it weren't for that damn accident...

D.O.C. - Ahh man, that would have been the shit! It would have been the shit, but I would have had to probably fight with Dre a lot because I don't think he was really interested in the direction that I wanted to go in. He was only interested in making party songs that muthafuckas wanna get drunk and dance to.

ThaFormula.com - What were you trying to get into?

D.O.C. - Well like I said, I used to be a church kid. Like when you get this record, you will feel it. It's god in my record and its a gang of nigga shit. It's a gang of old N.W.A. shit. When muthafuckas hear this record, their first comment is that they knew I was where all of the old N.W.A. shit came from. That's everybody's first word. So it's dirty in that sense, but there are bits and pieces where I'm rappin' myself for like little soliloquies and it's a trip. It will make you cry, it will make you laugh, it will make you mad, it will make you wanna drive fast and then it will make you wanna get drunk. This album is a trip.



ThaFormula.com - So how did it happen Doc, to where you had no involvement in Death Row business wise?

D.O.C. - Shortly after I had that accident, I started fucking with drugs. That's when I first started doing ecstasy. That was way back in '89. I started trying other things and it got to be a way for me to escape that pain. The white people at the top in the big offices, the ones with all the money, they were really only interested in Dre and Snoop. That shit got to be sort of painful even though they needed me to come and sign papers to get things done. It just started to feel like I was slippin', so I started getting more fucked up. I still seemed to make it to the muthafuckin' studio everyday and put my work in, but the more I fell, the more I slipped into that hole. These other guys, the more they started to rise up, nobody reached down to pick me up you know.




 Anyway, after we all came together and started this Death Row shit, I started sinkin' and they started rising. I started losing control, and they started going to meetings without me. I got to give these guys credit to say that they had enough respect for me to where they thought that I was in complete control and knew what I was doing. I fucked up a lot of Dr. Dre's parties and business meetings that I would go to fucked up and nobody still wouldn't say shit to me. They wouldn't say, "Hey Doc, you can't do this or take this muthafucka home. None of that shit. I'd be the only muthafucka in there drunk, "walkin' around with a sawed off shot gun and no shirt on." Threatening everybody and would nobody say shit to me man. So I'm just out there and I can understand to a certain extent why they would be like, "man we gotta handle our business." I ain't fittin' to let this muthafucka fuck mine off. But when I first started making this attempt to come back, none of those guys reached out to really help me and they had their own issues at the time, and I don't look for no nigga to help me because I could make it happen. But none of those guys really felt bad about none of my situations, except for Nate Dogg, let me take that lie back. Nate Dogg was the one person who continually through those seven years, always had great empathy for my situation and always told me that.



 Well now after ten years, I finally got enough air back in my balls where I feel like talkin' and trust me when you hear this record, your gonna be like man! Matter of fact there is shit on this record that is so dirty, I know these muthafuckas are gonna be comin at me like, "Nigga how you gonna say some shit like that, hell naw get that off the shelf. You're ruining our kids. When they come at me with that conversation, watch how cool, calm, and collective as I sit back and converse with these folks. Oh, I got they ass. They fucked up( Laughs).

ThaFormula.com - Now let's get into the Chronic. You were in the "Nuthin' but a G Thang" video and everything seemed great at Death Row. Was it?

D.O.C. - Yeah, everything was great at that time.  I still didn't have anything of my own but I was staying at Dre's house and I had no money of my own, but I could ask Dre for 5 grand at any time and get it.  Matter of fact, I used to ask Dre for 5 grand every 3 or 4 days for about 2 years and would get it and then go spend it up on dope.  I don't know if Dre knew, but how could you not know?




ThaFormula.com - After the first Chronic dropped, did you see things starting to come to an end or not?

D.O.C. - Oh sure I did.  See the shit that they were doing was unnecessary and sooner or later that shit is gonna catch up.  The drug shit had started to get kind of old.  In '94, I asked Dre what's up with me rappin'. I had written a song and he said you should let me put that on this next record and it really pissed me off because nobody was really givin' a fuck about me.  I told him what about me muthafucka, I wanna rap to.  I wanted to do something, but they had regulated me to comic relief.  I'm a damn fool anyway.  I'm a natural comedian so that's what I had been regulated to.  I was the comic relief on the album. 

ThaFormula.com - So Dre said no about you rappin then?

D.O.C. - He didn't think that you could make a good record with this voice.  So that's when I left out of there.  See me and Dre is like a big brother, little brother thing and when the big brother piss his little brother off, then his little brother is gonna number one, take his shit and run with it, which I did.  "Heltah Skeltah" was really a Dr. Dre record that he was starting to plan on working on that I had actually already started writing lyrics for, and one of the songs that he was trying to takeaway from me was a song that he wanted to put on "Heltah Skeltah."  So I was like "fuck this shit," went to Atlanta and recorded the album.

ThaFormula.com - When you look back at that album now, what are your thoughts on it?

D.O.C. - I think that the album was as far as hip-hop records are concerned not a great record.  There is merit to the record because of who it is and because of the shit the dude done went through trying to get his shit done, but I didn't go buy it.  I'll put it to you like that and if I wouldn't go buy it then it ain't really happening.

ThaFormula.com - Do you think it was a mistake when you look back at it now?

D.O.C. - Hell nah, I needed money.  I had no money.





ThaFormula.com - When exactly did you leave to do “Heltah Skeltah?”

D.O.C. - I left L.A. at the end of ‘94 because I wanted to rap and Dre didn't see it.

ThaFormula.com - Do you agree with Dre now when you look back at how things turned out with that project?

D.O.C. - Well that's a yes and a no answer, because if you’re Dr. Dre you can take “twiddle dee” and make a hit record. You’re Dr. Dre god dammit! There’s nothing that you can't do in a studio, so if it was in your heart to make a hit record on me, you would have done it. You would have found some kind of way to do it. When you think of the old D.O.C., it's probably best to leave it like that, but you know when you think about D.O.C. the person, the man that's still breathin’ right now, still has music in his soul that he has to get up out of him, then you want him to get that shit out.


well i'm glad the D.O.C. stole some skeleton beats from dre; otherwise those would have been put in dre's vault. maybe the D.O.C. made a mistake, when he tried to sound like the "old" D.O.C. , because that flow didn't work out well for his voice. but his voice fits the concept of the helter skelter album perfectly; that's why i agree with him that it was not a mistake to release the album. though the D.O.C. called "his" 3rd album Deuce; that sounds to me that he's not satisfied with the quality of helter skelter.
sure it's good to reflect your old work, but the D.O.C. put the helter skelter project together with the best tools he had at the time. i mean, the album would not be released on death row, and there was no way Dre was going to be involved in the process. (that's why i don't agree with the choice the D.O.C. made for the name of his 3rd album; he shouldn't have referred to the 2nd album).

but it's good to see that the D.O.C. won't stop rapping; on Deuce you could already hear a preview of his "new" flow. just because it's different, doesn't mean it's bad (although he had such a powerful voice before the accident; no wonder he called himself the kid with the golden voice) it's not like he's dead. I'm really looking forward to Voice Threw Hot Vessels
« Last Edit: November 16, 2007, 12:29:39 PM by Dre-Day »
 

Chad Vader

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #57 on: November 17, 2007, 04:04:15 AM »
^^^^
Hell yeah,even tho Helter Skelter is on some totally different shit than No One Can Do It Better,I love it.
[The Helter Skelter concept and dark production fits his "new" voice.
The Deuce was supposed to be a 6-2 solo,,,
« Last Edit: November 17, 2007, 09:00:06 AM by Chadrick »
 

Tha Psycho Hustla

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #58 on: November 17, 2007, 04:52:08 AM »
man after hearin all that shit, i dont have no sympathy for dre.
that guy is fucked up.c´mon.fuck him.im not hatin on him but, he aint down with the homies, why he didnt help doc?or let him rap on the chronic?everybody saw it that it worked even with his fucked up voice.
 

Dre-Day

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Re: Dr.Dre Magazine Scans thread. *Interviews,reviews etc.*
« Reply #59 on: November 17, 2007, 08:57:52 AM »
Quote

Dubcnn: Why do that, though? I'm sure he's got beats that he's not happy with that he could easily slang to up and coming artists who would appreciate them.

I know, dogg! I be thinking the same thing! Cause he just makes them all day, he spits them out! But it's his art, I can't tell him what to do with his shit. I don't even try, cause it won't work!

Quote
The one thing that Dr. Dre is missing now is D.O.C. and that's the same way that I would tell those young guys, hey that sucks!  I would tell Dre's big ass the same shit. Hey, I love you, and your the greatest of all time, but that's bullshit!

ThaFormula.com - So at this point in time there is nobody in there to tell him, "Hey Dre, I don't know about that beat right there?"

D.O.C. - That's right. Number one, there is nobody there that I think, and this is just my own personal humble opinion, there's nobody there that I think knows the difference between a hit record, or not, and even if they knew, they're going to get paid so they're not gonna tell him. Me, I never gave a fuck. You muthafuckas ain't payin' me anyway, so I might as well tell you your shit stinks.


ThaFormula.com - Now back to what you were tellin’ me about the “2001” album because it got me a little curious when you said it wasn't that fun recording that album...

D.O.C. - Nah, because I kept getting into it with Dre's people. His entourage, his group of people that worked at Aftermath and the people that he had around him in the studio are all a bunch of ball lickers, and if your gonna suck nuts and you’re around me then be aware that I'm gonna tell you that your a dick sucka!(Laughs) Dre has surrounded himself with a lot of non-Dre's. See nobody is pushing Dre to make great records right now. No matter what anybody says hip-hop is always who's better then who, and if nobody is pushing Dre to be better, then what the fuck has he got to do? Everything he does is cool cause nobody is doing anything better. But you wait till this record comes out. He's fittin’ to have to pull something out of that god damn bag. He's talkin’ about workin’ on a record called “Detox” he told me. Well he's gonna have to bring something other then that same ‘ol shit he's been doing if he think he's fittin’ to move the crowd now.


lol, dre should just rank his own beats, put them in different categories and sell at a price that fits the quality according to him  ;) i mean, just because he thinks it's not good enough, doesn't mean it's a bad track. he has probably thrown a few thousand beats away by now.

by the way, i hope the D.O.C. is going to use those Deuce leftovers; he could use them for a real Six-Two soloalbum(or mixtape).