THE FIXXERS (QUIK & AMG)  (June 2007) | Interview By: Eddie Gurrola

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The Fixxers Gave Dubcnn A Shoutout! Check That Here

Full Video Interview Download Here

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Dubcnn: We’re here with Quik and AMG, also known as The Fixxers. How’s it going guys?

Quik: It’s going excellent!

AMG: We’re good man! Right now we’re in San Diego, at the Ball 4 Real. We’re doing a halftime show, rocking it out.

Quik: Cox Arena!

AMG: Cox! Two of them! *Laughs* We’ve been to Sacramento, we’ve been to Vegas, we’re going to Oakland, and we’re here.

Quik: And St. Louis. Three cities in two days…

AMG: …In the midst of recording this new record we’ve got. This fabulous, fantabulous, exceptional hip-hop product called “The Midnight Life.”

Dubcnn: So, we’ve been hearing a lot of different things about the album, but nothing’s been really specific. Is the album pretty much done?

Quik: We’re putting finishing touches on it now. As a matter of fact, we’ve been spending a lot of time on the road, so it’s hard to do records on the road.

AMG: I don’t want to say a number, but we’re close to having it done. The bottom line is, you’re not really supposed to hear anything because it’s supposed to come out when it comes out…

Quik: …As a secret! Everybody wants to hear it as it’s being recorded.

AMG: Yeah, [they want to] keep hearing bits and pieces, and that fucks up the process.

Quik: That’s like seeing your Christmas present on December 6th…

AMG: …And then you see another one on the 15th, and another one on the 19th, and then you maybe open one on the 24th.

Dubcnn: I see what you guys are saying. With all the internet leaking, it’s hard to get something out as a surprise!

Quik: I’m petrified of internet leaking. I personally don’t want the record to leak.

AMG: He was frozen the other day. *They both pause, frozen*

Quik: Exactly!

Dubcnn: So, last time we talked, you described the sound of “The Midnight Life” as being something completely new. So, do you feel the album will probably pioneer a new sound for all of hip-hop?

Quik: Well, I don’t think it’s a pioneering thing. I actually don’t believe that you can re-invent any wheels, especially in music. It’s all been done – every chord has been played. So, it is what it is. But, for us, it’s different because we got a lot of new equipment. Traditionally, when people get new equipment, they think differently, just a little bit.

AMG: Different sounds and shit.

Quik: Yeah! Different sounds, different elements, mixing a little bit of what we do. It’s basically what it is. It’s a fun record. You know?

AMG: Fun meaning hard, and shit!

Quik: But it’s fun though. Well, it’s fun because I remember when my first record came out, and we used to damn near blush when people said the titles of our records like “Bitch Betta Have My Money” and “Sweet Black Pussy.” It was like, “Oh God! Damn, did we write that?” But we did. I mean, we’re ghetto dudes. We’re asphalt cats. So, technically to us, we made it to where we could be in our own element, making our records the way we used to.

A lot of studios got shut down, and everybody went to digital. We’ve got a hybrid studio ourselves, which is a little bit of our old and a little bit of our new. So that’s what people should expect from our record – a little bit of what grounded us, and a little bit of what they’ve never known to expect.

AMG: Same liquor store flow! Different beats, different styles. I don’t know how much of an impact it will be, but the record seems to be doing pretty good right now. We’ve got the remix coming out with Jim Jones. We’re trying to get 50 [Cent] on it. He’s loaning me $300 million, and we’ll buy a couple airplanes and some bitches.

Dubcnn: *Laughs* All right, so tell us about how you guys got in the studio and came up with “Can U Werk Wit Dat.”

Quik: Man, we were…

AMG: Drunk!

Quik: Yeah. Pretty much blitzed. You know what’s funny? Somebody asked me in another interview…they were like, “Quik! So, what made you change you style on rapping on the second verse of “Can You Werk Wit Dat”? Were you high?” I’m like, “No! I was hoarse.”

AMG: He rode a horse to the studio, and what happened was, when he got there, the horse wanted apples and shit, and all we had was leftover cocktails…

Quik: …and the inside of blunts! That’s all we had.

AMG: The horse started rappin’, and I was like, “That’d be hot if you could sound like the horse.” He a cool nigga though.

Quik: *Makes horse noise*

AMG: He rode the horse all the way to the studio, and then drove home.

Dubcnn: *Laughs* So that’s how it happened, you just had a sore throat?

Quik: We was having fun, my man *points to AMG* made a beat, [and] we started turning it up real loud in the studio to make everybody’s ears hurt. They was like, “we like it because we want y’all to turn this shit down. It’s too loud!”

You know? It was fun, man, we was having fun in the studio, showing off. We’ve got equipment that runs itself! It’s automated. So, red lights will go on at certain minutes…we live our life by a timeline. We’ve got big clocks up. At an hour up [on the clock,] we’ll know he [needs to be] up on the microphone recording. Then, if nobody is there, physically pushing play and record, the shit will start doing it by itself, because it’s all automated.

AMG: He’s a genie, I’m a genius.

Dubcnn: “Can U Werk Wit Dat” is blowing up all over the radio now. It seems like you guys are going to be getting a lot of new fans too, that might not have heard of you from back in the day…

AMG: Old people, young people, teenagers… a lot of them are putting “Can U Werk Wit Dat” on their Myspace. You guys continue to buy these ringtones, WERK to 30303.

Quik: Text that shit.

AMG: Buy the muthafuckin’ ringtone, you cheap muthafuckas! Get it!

Dubcnn: I got the ringtone.

Quik: Hey! It’s crunk, man. It’s fun.

AMG: This record is actually gonna be a “long time coming” type of record. Even though we’ve got it in place, [and] it’s working now, there’s still people that ain’t heard it. When they hear it though, they feel it, just like the first people that heard it. Like six months ago, we cracked this shit out…

Quik: …and that was six months! It’s funny, records only have a three month shelf life, for singles. On the 12th week, you’ve got to have another single out. This record has now passed the test of time and is still growing in popularity because it was a slow burn across the nation. It jumped in Mississippi and went back East, and that made it good for us. That bought us a little time, because it’s a good record.

Dubcnn: I remember I heard it for the first time on New Years Eve, and it’s still going stronger and stronger. So, there’s a lot of fans talking about all kinds of stuff. Have you ever thought about going on our forum and talking directly with the fans?

Quik: We do that on Myspace. We do that on www.thefixxers.com, we do that on www.myspace.com/djquik, www.myspace.com/thefixxers. We do that.

AMG: All we really ask for is better questions…

Quik: Yeah, not the same old, “So, what do you guys do?” Somebody asked me this. Somebody said, “Do you think you’re too old to be doing what you’re doing?”

Dubcnn: Why the fuck would they do that?

Quik: Well, it’s OK because they really don’t know how to phrase it, because they’ve seen us around forever. They don’t understand that we were teens, producing platinum records ourselves. So, the dumb thing is, why would you ask somebody that? You wouldn’t ask John Lennon that if he was alive, or Paul McCartney. You wouldn’t ask BB King that. BB King is 67 or 68 [Editor’s note: He’s actually 81!], and he’s still out there playing the guitar, packing houses, and having a good time.

AMG: [It’s] because blues [has] got more respect. Hip-hop is always being tested with every diss, and every beef. So they think that everything is supposed to be controversial. We have smooth, easy careers because we know how to work steady and stay long. Keep it pimpin’.

Quik: We don’t have a perishable fuckin’ sound. It stands the test. I mean, if you look at our old records, they still sound new right now. Even our sound mixed with everybody else, the 2Pac’s, the Jay-Z’s. It’s a good sound, and it effects people in certain ways.

AMG: We wanted to be in hip-hop for the basic sense of being good at it. Not just gettin’ rich…

Quik: Not for making money off it…

AMG: No, we wanted some money, but we didn’t know how much money this shit was involved with. But, just being good. That’s what’s missing. We want to be a part of hip-hop history, that’s it.

Dubcnn: That sounds like the right reason to be in it…

AMG: Yeah, that’s the real deal thing. We don’t make records like, “Oh, that’s gonna make us two million dollars.”

Quik: How many people can actually make records knowing that it’s going to make them two million dollars anyway? You do music from the gut, and it should effect people right at that point.

Dubcnn: You’ve got to be thinking…

Quik: Or you can not be thinking, and just feel it, because it’s a feeling. It’s music that hits you in the body sometimes before it hits you in the ears.

Dubcnn: We’re gonna go back to a classic collaboration between you two, “I Useta Kno Her,” one of my personal favorites.

Quik: Hey! 1991.

Dubcnn: Tell us about what you did when you recorded that track.

Quik: When we did that record?

Dubcnn: Yeah.

AMG: We did it at your house?

Quik: Yeah, we did it at the house with the big Olympic swimming pools, with the cabana with the rock lava pit, and the nosy neighbors!

AMG: “I useta kno her!”

Quik: Our neighbors were our audience, because they used to look over the gate of our house, past the palm trees and past the big spearmint trees, and look down at all the naked Puerto Rican girls we had in our swimming pool. Really!

Dubcnn: Looking back on it, it’s been almost ten years since that collaboration happened, but do you still get some of the same vibes when you’re collaborating together now?

Quik: The party will never stop. We see people that’s way too old to be partying, still at the party, [and] still being effective. I mean, what do you say about KRS-One? He still rocks parties. What do you say about…you know, classic people who still go out and get the same amount of respect when they first came out? [This is] even if they’re not selling that many records, because you don’t really have to buy records no more, you can just cheat and download them. But, people like that are still effective because they’re the person. You take them out of the equation, and you’ve just got his music. It’s not the same thing; it’s impersonal. So, with him being there, it means something, it’s like a timestamp for everybody to relate to hip-hop.

Dubcnn: Do you guys have anything else you want to say to the fans, and the readers at Dubcnn?

AMG: Oh yeah, man! Definitely look out for the remix, definitely look out for the album, “Midnight Life.” We’re doing it for y’all, you know what I’m sayin’? We’re doing it because we love it, but we’re doing it for y’all, and we appreciate everything y’all have done for us. Get that ringtone. Text WERK9 to 30303. We’re The Fixxers, in your muthafuckin’ face! Dirty muthafuckin’ West! Biatch!

Quik: Fixxers means just that. We’re fixing shit.

AMG: And to all you bitches, we’re gonna fix your pussies too!