(DJ) QUIK  (April 2007) | Interview By: Eddie Gurrola

       Dubcnn only last month had the honour of becoming the first outlet to interview Quik & AMG since the formation of their new collective name; The Fixxers. On March 24th, 2007, the two of them perfomed live at the Rimac Arena in San Diego, California and dubcnn was on hand to sit down to breifly speak with Quik. We get the details behind the dropped of "DJ" from his title, discuss his recent work with Xzibit, find out if the Detox call from Dr. Dre has yet occured and also get the lowdown on the new deal with Interscope. AMG appears for a moment to hype "Midnight Life" as Quik tells us what they are working on currently for the new album and much more in this world exclusive.

As always we have both the transcript and the audio for you to check and please feel free to send any feedback regarding the interview to: eddiegurolla@dubcnn.com

 

Interview was done March 24th, 2007 at the Rimac Arena in San Diego, California.

Questions Asked By : Eddie Gurrola

Quik Gave Dubcnn.com A Shoutout! Check That Here

Full Interview In Audio : Here

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Dubcnn: So, you’ve got the new group The Fixxers, but, [first,] why’d you drop the DJ from your name?

Quik: ‘Cause, see that shit the dude was doing? That Bone Thugs-N-Harmony DJ was doing? All that? *makes scratching noise* I stopped doing that, unfortunately, because I didn’t really believe in it like that. I stopped like, I stopped practicing too early. You know, when I went to rapping, I had to make a choice, to either be the MC or the DJ, but I kept the DJ because I still did the beats and I still scratched on my records, but live I had to be an MC.

So, I’ve always been on tour, that shit’s always been like, you know, hot wire, black wire for me, and it’s hard to do them both. You can’t be the DJ and be the MC because you’ve gotta be out there, rockin’ the people, and you’ve gotta go back there and grind the turntables, so… And plus, I’m watchin’ the new DJs like on, just some other cool shit like, I watched this dude named DJ Melody, and a lot of local DJs in LA, Julio G discovered back [him] in, 93, maybe 94 or whatever, and he introduced crab scratching. And it was just something that was unique to us, and I never figured it out, I couldn’t get it. I’m used to blurr scratching, like *makes scratching noise*, where you scoop the record up and bend it, and just, we did that muthafucka just working the fader. But to see these dudes crab scratching, where they switched it up.

The hand on the record was doing less movement, but the fader hand was doing everything, it was just like, that crossed my signals. So, I dropped the DJ because, you know, I don’t do all the new scratching, I leave that to the young, new hot DJs that’s doing it.


Dubcnn: There’s a recent song you produced for Xzibit, “Ram Part Division.” That was an awesome song.

Quik: Y’all like it!


Dubcnn: Yeah!

Quik: You know what’s crazy? You know who co-produced it, believe it or not? The Bomb Squad, Keith Shocklee and them, you know, the Public Enemy producers. We did that in New York, I rode to New York with X, we flew out there, and we got out there and we started having a good time, he booked some of the studios.

It’s so ironic, Kanye West just so happened to be in the studio working with Patti LaBelle on some shit, and we were in the other studio, so we were listening to each other’s vibes. So, I’m going, damn, I’m sitting up there like trying to come up with a beat, and I wasn’t feelin it at first. I was like, damn, we’re hearing Kanye with the bass and shit, and X is like “Come on Quik, just relax man. I know you gonna do it, *makes smoking noise and gesture* just relax, just get into it,” and I was like, “X, man, goddamn man,” you know what I’m sayin? So, I started hearing the melody, in the room you know, New York is its own environment for music, and creativity is wicked out there, it’s dope. Like it’s a lot, like, anything sparks inspiration out there.

So I started hearing the melody *sings the melody*, and I start humming it like, *sings the melody* just to see if I can get a head nod and shit. And I got one guy’s head nodding, it’s like, and that’s all it took, so I started playing it on the synthesizer <sings the melody>, so it just came from there, it came from a simple idea. So I put the drums together, we did some weird drums I’ve never heard before, this crazy snap clap combination. X was liking it, X was groovin’, you know what I’m sayin? So, X started writing to it, I started finishing the music, I start writing a bridge and shit, different little chords and shit, and Keith Shocklee was like “Yeah son! That’s it son! Keep goin!” You know, I write it, we finished it, we put it on tape, and X was, you know the trip part about it was, it rocked the whole room! We were all sitting there going, “This is crazy!” We went outside to listen to it, just to see what the bass was doing, and the bass itself was vibrating everything in the lobby, you would see tracks and shit moving, and fixtures. And I said, “X, I think this is an OK record,” and he was like “ I like it.”

So, I would have literally did it for free for X, I would never charge X because of where we come from, I worked with him over at Aftermath, with Dre, and it was just fun that he can do that, he wanted to do a crazy verse with it, so it was like a live, chopped and screwed type of thing, it just retarded his voice, and it was on the H-3500, and he rapped while he heard himself being screwed like that. So for him to be Xzibit, to hear his voice coming out like retarded on the tape, it was just a dope image, it was like we just mixed reality with fiction.


Dubcnn: So he was rapping normally, and it was changed?

Quik: Yeah, he did that the whole time.


Dubcnn: Oh, wow, I thought he just changed his voice, because I’ve heard him sound different a couple other times.

Quik: Nah, he was rapping through a program.


Dubcnn: Yeah, it turned out awesome.


Quik: Thank you.


Dubcnn: You mentioned working with Dre, Aftermath, all that, are you doing anything with “Detox,” have you talked to him about that at all?

Quik: He hasn’t called yet, and I don’t wanna bug him, but, my position is always been whatever the Good Doctor needs from me, I’m there. It’s that simple.


Dubcnn: Are you always in the studio in between albums, or if you aren’t in the studio for a while, does it take you awhile to get your rhythm back?

Quik: Yeah, it’s just like anything that you have to do to maintain, keeping your chops up, like practicing anything, like basketball players have to stay in shape. Baseball, soccer players, they have to keep running to stay loose. When you stay out of the studio for an extended amount of time, you get a little rusty, we ain’t ashamed to admit that you will get rusty.

So, the cool thing about it is, if you stay in the studio long enough, and you get your rhythm back, and you’ve got people groovin’, then you can build hot records from that momentum. It’s momentum, you’ve got to build the momentum back up. And I love it, like right now, we’re getting the momentum up right now, and it’s just sick right now. It’s so sick in the studio. And we’re doing new shit we’ve never heard before, like we grew up on all the shit, and it would be retarded for us to just go back and be redundant, and do stuff that we’ve done already. This album right here is a sick fuckin record.


*AMG drops in*


AMG: AMG, The Fixxers, yeah baby! Play it, download it, buy it, “Midnight Life!” Pimp, pimp, pimp!

Quik: He’s part of the reason we got signed to Interscope!


Dubcnn: So are you guys on that for the whole album, or just the single?

Quik: Tell ‘em G, are we on there for the whole album or the single?

AMG: Album.


Dubcnn: Album? Fuck yeah!

Quik: Isn’t that crazy? On Interscope!


Dubcnn: As far as “The Midnight Life,” the new album, what’s the sound gonna be like on it?

Quik: You know what it is? It’s not electronica, it’s not techno, it’s not drum and bass, it’s not jungle, it’s not gangsta rap, it’s not R&B, hip hop, it’s not jazz, it’s not East Coast, it’s not West Coast. What it is, is we’re buying a bunch of new equipment, like a bunch of new sounds, a bunch of new stuff. Like, we’re using German technology, all the Native Instruments shit, you know, a bunch of plug-ins now, all the Arturia shit, Logic 7, Pro Tools HD, you know hard disk recorders, dope fuckin’ 24 bit, 192K sampling ADDs and shit.

So we’re just building a strictly new sound, it’s gonna be bigger than analog. It’s a digital record, but it’s gonna sound, now that the technology has caught up to where we were back like 10 years ago, it’s gonna be a real advanced sound. You know, it’s crazy clean, it’s warm, it’s minimalist production, but it’s broad, it’s band, and it’s wide.


Dubcnn: So it’s exactly what you would want?

Quik: Yeah. It’s so crazy. Like, it freaks children out! You should hear the shit, it’s like candy, it’s like hyper, they get hyper off of it, and you can’t beat that.


Dubcnn: That sounds fuckin’ ridiculous dude.

Quik: Ahh, it’s fun. Watch when you hear this shit. We’re working on the second single right now, we had to stop to come do the show, but, we’re writing the song right now, like, it’s on the desk, so, when we leave here, and go back to it, we’ve gonna go finish it.


Dubcnn: Tonight?

Quik: Yeah, we’re going back tonight.


Dubcnn: What’s the name of that song?

Quik: The song is called “Dough,” it’s like a stripper record. It’s a record for the pole! Like, anybody can bounce to it. When you hear it, the bass is... First of all, it’s gonna cost us probably about $600 in speakers just to mix the record, because we’re gonna blow the shit out. *Makes rapid hand motions to describe the bass* It’s just like this, it’s all it does, it won’t let you go, it’ll move your pants, it’s the low end theory at its finest. Shout outs to fuckin Tribe Called Quest.


Dubcnn: Oh my god.

Quik: It’s sick. I’ve haven’t been this happy about anything in a long time, I mean, I had dismal independent fuckin’ fiascos, debacles, you know.


Dubcnn: Like Bungalo Records?

Quik: Oh, poor Bungalo. Like, wow, why would they be that, why would they be a wolf in sheep’s clothing? I mean, they could have been a serious, stand out label, but they went for the small money instead of the big money. They all just snatch and grab. They give the industry a bad name. They make it bad for some people. Like I can’t believe that K-Ci Hailey put an album out on that label, and they’re the same people that put out a record on that guy Corey, the American Idol who supposedly had sex with Paula Abdul, they put out a record on him.


Dubcnn: They did? Yeah I saw the K-Ci album.

Quik: Yeah, I couldn’t believe it.


Dubcnn: Wow. Alright, there’s a lot of unreleased tracks that we’ve heard on the Internet and all that, like from back in the day or whatever, have you ever thought of putting that up online like on Myspace, you could put it up on your Myspace and sell them, or something like that, because everyone really wants to hear that kind of stuff.

Quik: If they’re unreleased, it means that they weren’t good enough for primetime back then, and it probably won’t be now. Like, when people raid the vaults and get records out, they still need to use discretion because those records might not be commercially viable. You know, you still wanna entertain your crowd. I don’t wanna play demos for my audience, they expect more than that. For me at least.


Dubcnn: We’ve heard of this track called “Swallow Me” and we heard it on “One On One,” on the intro, remember that?

Quik: Oh, *starts singing it* Y’all heard that?


Dubcnn: Yeah, we’ve heard the instrumental, but we never heard the actual song,

Quik: Yeah, I buried it!


Dubcnn: So was it just not that good?

Quik: *Laughs* No, it wasn’t that it wasn’t that good, the music was trippy.


Dubcnn: Yeah, I love that instrumental. It’s awesome.

Quik: Thank you. The lyrics were just too misogynistic, and, whenever I get a wrinkle from a girl’s face like *raises eyebrow*, if I see this shit, it’s not sexy. But if this goes up ,*smiles*, and this doesn’t move *points to eyebrow*, then it’s a good record. I read facial expressions. That was one that the girls didn’t really dig, but they liked “One On One.” Both of those records were the same, like “One on One” and “Stroke Me,” whatever it was called, they were one record, it was a seven minute thing. And I just went ahead and cut it in half.


Dubcnn: Oh so that’s why we hear it at the beginning?

Quik: Yeah, that’s why you hear it fading in at the beginning.