THE D.O.C.

[sawedoff12gauge]

I was just creepin through all the pages of this forum and all of the sudden i saw the doc interview so i read part 1 and part 2 and they say watch for part 3 of this interview but i couldn't find it please help me out
    ---PEACE----

[Lil Jay]

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.'

[Lil Jay]

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.  

[sawedoff12gauge]

thx potna

[icebergslimIII]

Good interview with the DOC...this thread is kind of old, but has some good stuff on Dre as to why he rarely does production work for people after the 1st album. I guess Eminem and 50 cent have been the exceptions. Dre does seem to do quite a bit of production for Gwen Stefani for some reason. Hmmm.  I remember Dre was supposed to do a CD with Ice Cube called Helter Skelta or something...anyone know why that Cube/Dre cd never came out? I heard Natural Born Killaz was supposed to be on it.

[Low Key]

I remember Dre was supposed to do a CD with Ice Cube called Helter Skelta or something...anyone know why that Cube/Dre cd never came out? I heard Natural Born Killaz was supposed to be on it.

That was around the time when Dre started getting more and more distant from Death Row. It was right around 94-95, and if you look at the inserts for a lot of the stuff they did then, it was Daz, Soopafly, or someone else. He did an occasional song here and there (California Love, Can't C Me), but never a whole album.

But what I wanna know is, did the DOC ever do that show just lip synching? That would have been a sight to see.

[youngeastwood]

Damn If They Could Only Fix The DOC;z Voice

[Denial! Is Actively Joinin The Revolution]

i like his voice like it for some reason sounds real grimy

[dexter]

Getting 5000 from DRE EVERY 3 or 4 days DAMN for a year
Dre must be loaded!

[icebergslimIII]

Damn If They Could Only Fix The DOC;z Voice

When you think about it, didn't DOC have that car wreck right when his album dropped? Talk about a tragedy, he had so much talent and never got to do any rapping again. I often wonder how successful he could have been - he was a dope rapper. Now that I think about it, seem like DOC had like 4 videos from No One Can Do It Better - Funky Enough, Formula, Beautiful But Deadly and that DOC and the Doctor. Back then, rappers rarely released 4 videos from an album like they do now. I guess it was to promote his album since he couldnt do concerts are anything. Maybe he can find a doctor that can fix his vocal cords. herbal tea or something.