It's December 29, 2025, 08:27:24 AM
some pretty good stuff on here but GOT DAMN @ that mixing/mastering.there is no way on earth Quik OK'd this stuff to be released in such garbage quality
DJ Quik didn't really have anything to do with this other than production on a few tracks. My guess on this, and I could be totally wrong....Free had some of these DJ Quik songs in the vault forever, like GET IT. I know he had GOOD ENOUGH pulled from his last album because Quik wanted to save it. Quik been pushing this Quik/Free album for the last 20 years, I believe it was supposed to be called Geminis. And i think finally both of them realized this is never going to happen and Quik finally gave Free the OK to release some of these songs. But of course they were never fully mixed or mastered. Although GET IT sounds like it was mastered pretty well. But i mean damn, holding on to a 15 year old song, i'm glad they finally just released it. Even if they did come together and do an album (highly unlikely), they'll record new stuff anyways. I think that's part of why the mixing seems all over the place and it's a mix of older and newer songs. I do think Free was cleaning out the vault for some of these songs, which i'm glad he did. GET IT is the true gem, i never thought i'd get to hear it in HQ. Been listening to audio from that concert rip forever. Then someone finally put the instrumental under it, which helped a bit. But getting it on an album is so much better.
maybe i just presume after hearing this that Free stuck the Quik tracks on there without his permission, such is the horrendous quality. it's as if someone took a low quality mp3 through a very low quality mastering process and fried them. Quik is known for sound quality so I presume when any song he produced is released on a commercial project (something people are paying for) he ideally is going to OK the final mix/master. I could be totally wrong but it's just painful to hear his records presented in this way. likewise that Get It track is equally rubbish quality, just listen to the OG instrumental it's taken from and it's 100 times clearer/fuller.
it does seem to be a theme with Quik records that are handed off to other artists on projects he isn't overseeing. could well be a mastering/final mixdown thing.examplesthe track with Game on Doc 2.5 - dodgy mix/masteringJon B song Fill Your Cup - sounded amazing in previews/live and final version is poo, not properly mixed. the actual Book of David songs sound a million times better.in the case of this project you can hear the tracks are complete, they're not demos all instruments/sounds are in place at relative levels but something went horribly wrong getting them to us in proper quality. we'll see if Quik says anything later down the line, he simply might not care or might not even be aware of this release.
it could be a mastering issue quik has no say on how others have their work mastereddifferent producers have their songs mixed differently depending on how the mastering engineer approaches it quik might be mixing things thinner in order for a good mastering engineer to have more room to play with on the low end but when a bad mastering engineer gets a hold of that mix, he may just be amplifying the thin sounds as opposed to balancing everything out, like a good mastering engineer does