 | DJ Quik & Kurupt Predict BlaQKout
By: K. Jakab
|
When I found out whom I
would be interviewing, I almost said "No." The resumes of the two artists runs
miles long, including collaborations with 2Pac, Snoop Dog, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube,
etc. etc., not to mention countless shout outs in a number of rap tunes. So, I called the west coast,
overly enthused in speaking with DJ Quik and Kurupt (Young Gotti) about their
new album together, The Blaqkout. The following 23-minutes proved to be
the most thrilling of 2009 thus far. Their manager, Richie
answered and immediately held the receiver up to a speaker, where Quik was
playing for Richie and Kurupt the original sample for "Addictive" by Truth Hurts
and Rakim. I cut a rug or two in my day
to this song, up in the clubs, winding and grinding with my girls. This was an
exceptional two minutes spent listening to “Thoda Resham Lagta Hai (It Looks
Silky)” by Lata Mangeshkar, a.k.a. the O.G. of "Addictive." This
was just the beginning of an in-depth interview about the new album, The Blaqkout,
their thoughts on the current state of hip hop, and how they intend to move the
game forward. DJ QUIK: Kinga? Richie: Kinga, from
soundhustle.com. Quik: Sound hustle,
Soudhustle.com! Sounds like the company I work for. <laughs> Kinga, you
there? SH: Ya, I’m here! Is this Quik?
Quik: Ya, this is Quik right
here and Kurupt is just coming into the room. SH: Hey, whaddup, thanks for
talking to me. I just got a nice behind-the-scenes of “Addictive”. Quik: Yeah. SH: Where did you ever find
that song? Quik: Ya, uh, I was watching
a Bollywood channel on Warner, uh, Warner TV, and they let us kind of demo this
channel. And I was recording — no, I was brushing my teeth! — one night, and I
had it on this channel and I didn’t know what they were saying, and I went to
brush my teeth, and I came back into the room because I couldn’t stop moving!
There was something in there that had me and I didn’t understand it. I felt it
before I heard it. And I just pushed record on my VCR like, “I gotta record
this” and I watched it all the way through, and this lady was doing an Indian
dance and everything and it was totally dope, and I played it back and I
snapped the tape outta the vcr, took it to the studio, dumped it there, bumped
the audio onto a mini-disc, put it my mini-disc recorder, sampled it to an MPC
3000, blew the bass around it, and gave the master tapes to Truth Hurts, who
took it to Dr. Dre. Dr. Dre said come to the studio. I went to the studio, Dr. Dre
was like, “Here’s a budget, go do what you do.” He opened up [the studio] for
me, we went there we re-recorded it there, put it to analog tape, sent Dr. Dre
the tape, and then he invited us to the studio about two weeks later and said,
“Listen to this.” And by that time, the lyrics were done, the vocals were done,
and I was… I was over the moon. <laughs> SH: You guys were also just
listening to the sample, [from the new album, The BLAQKOUT] from Hey Playa
Moroccan Blues? Quik: Yes. I got that sample
is from Andrew Zimmern, and his Moroccan episode of “Bizarre Foods.” I’m a fan
of that show because the balls that this man must have to put some of those
things in his mouth are uncanny to me. So, I’m watching it and I heard that
little sound bit and I rewound it and was like “Oh my god, here we go again.
Here’s another dance record!” You know, that I think will make sense. So I took
it to the studio, sampled it from my DVD to my MPC, put a beat up underneath
it, but this time I took a extra care and caution in getting the sample
cleared. It took a long time but we got it cleared. SH: I read that a lot of
samples are taking a while to get cleared. Quik: Ya! About three
months, sometimes! And it never used to be like that! SH: What do you think has
changed? Quik: I don’t know what’s
going on but I know it’s worth the wait. Like me and Kurupt’s album would’ve
came out in like February, March. It was actually gonna come out in January but
we couldn’t clear “Anniversary” by Tony Toni Tone and the “Moroccan Blues.” But
we kept workin’ at it until finally they said “Yes,” and we reached an
agreement and the record gets to come out. SH: You guys had the album
done last summer, right? Quik: Yeah, we started it
last June and technically it was done by October. We just knocked it out and we
were like, “Let’s hurry up and put out it out, and do another one.” Like, if
that’s the case, if we can do this, we can turn this into a dope business.
Like, we could turn out hip hop records even faster, or rap records, or
whatever you want to call it. It just took a long time for the business to get
the samples cleared and for everyone to be on the same page and see our vision.
Now, we got the distributor behind us. This record’s coming out on my label,
Mad Science, on Kurupt’s label, Pentagon, distributed by Fontana/Universal, so
now we got the whole machine behind us. Now they see our vision. They see that
we are ready to go out and work this eclectic record that we did — because our
album is eclectic. It’s a little avant garde, a little newish. You know, we’re
not doing gangster rap, we’re doing rap for all genres. SH: Rap certainly has
evolved over the years. Quik: It has. SH: How do you feel about
that state of rap today? Are you working with it or are you working against it?
Quik: Some of them I just
don’t let them in, so if that means I’m working against them, so be it. But
some records I can’t let in because we spent a lot of money and time honing and
crafting our skills to just let people come in and dumb down music so much.
It’s like, what are we supposed to do with all those musical chops we learned
and all the crazy records we had to study like Chopin and Tchaikovsky. What do
we do with that if everything is just down to a synthesizer and a drum beat and
a simple hook? We thought we were supposed to keep going with creativity. Like
Dr. Dre always strived to get better and his sound just snowballed into
something that’s unreachable. So I’m almost offended that people wanna do the
ABCDEFG records again. I didn’t think it was supposed to start over and go to
teeny-bopper music that fast. But if that’s what it is, so be it. I ain’t knockin’
nobody’s hustle. I hope they can make all the money in ringtones that they can
sell. Because I think that real music lasts forever and I wanna continue to do
real music before I sell out and do teeny-bopper music. SH: Well, I hope you do. So,
I read that the album is scheduled to come on April 28th. Then I
read that it was coming out in June. Quik: Well, it was slated
for April 28th but then again we had the sample clearance issue and
it took a tailspin again. So, the next available date for it to come out this
year was June 9th. It’s politics now. It’s not easy to put out a record like it
used to be. It takes a lot of people and a lot of time. SH: So the new album, Blaqkout.
I gotta ask about the spelling: Blaqkout. Tell me about the spelling. Quik: Does it seem like a
play on letters? Like an anagram, or, like, goofy? SH: I think I know why
there’s a Q, but I want you to tell me. Kurupt: Well, you know, it’s
Quik and Kurupt. We threw that in there… Blaqkout. B-L-A- Q for Quik, K for Kurupt,
and “OUT” — just our own little fun thing there. Everything about this album,
we’re having a lot of fun with this particular project. Quik: We’re not doing it for
money; we’re not trying to put a record out before we get cold. As far as I’m
concerned, hip hop left us a long time ago. We got off the bus and we weren’t
scared to be nomadic for a minute. So we’re like musical nomads with this
record and we let the bus leave because nine times outta ten, a new sports car gonna
come along and as long as she’s got survival insurance driving that Ferrari,
we’re gonna get in the car with that bitch, to paraphrase that commercial. The
next bus is gonna come along, but we want to be able to have our own bus and
not exclude our fans, and we’re not afraid to get new fans. It’s an eclectic
record. SH: What else can we look
forward to on the record? Quik: You can expect avant garde.
“Fuck Ya’ll” is just a throwback, vintage gangster rap hip hop record. It’s not
cutting edge, it’s not totally over the top; it’s kind of accessible for people
who know us. It’s not really directed toward nobody. My part is personal, but I
got my brothers in there and they deserve to hear me say “fuck ya’ll” and
hopefully they use that to get back in the game and use that as leverage. It’s
tough love. But “Moroccan Blues” is more outside of the box for us. It’s more
of a business move too. We can actually get Andrew Zimmern in the video and
collaborate with the Travel Channel and get different viewers. And the rest of
the record is eclectic in the sense that we have more native records, like “Whatcha
Wan Do” is a native record. We got this song called “Do You Know” where we
sampled Rafael Saadiq’s “Anniversary” and just put an 808 beat up under it. Nothing
too outside of the norm, but just good for the record. We got this song called
“The Appeal” that is really insightful, sort of like a record that you are just
drawn to, with like “Jaws” music. And Kurupt has this song called “9 Times Outta
10” that is just innovative, like the drum pattern has never been done before
in hip hop. And I’ve heard every drum pattern that has ever been done and still
came up with a new one, so I’m glad that I’m still sharp as far as finding my
own niche. I got a record called
“Jupiter’s Critic in the Mind of Mars,” where it’s totally electronica and
techno that’s comedy. Like, I’m not urging everybody to drink Patrone and dance,
I’m just clowning about the state of hip hop today, but really light-hearted. I
got no axe to grind for no hip hop artists, you know? We’re just having fun
together. We’re doing music for us. Kurupt: Yeah. SH: It seems really fun. I
played “Moroccan Blues” a million times in the last 24 hours and everyone who
heard it was like, “This is DOPE.” Quik: Thank you. SH: You mentioned before, it
seems that not enough artists are producing albums for the fun of it, rather
than for the monetary gain. Would you agree with that? That artists are making
more commercial stuff that is sellable and will appeal to a small demographic.
I feel as though you guys are pushing the boundaries with this album. Quik: Ya, I totally agree
with you. There are records that I’ve bought that I don’t know why I bought
them. Do I want to hear someone bragging about their money to me all day now,
if I’m a hip hop fan? Unless I want to bite their style, it sounds like
decadence to me — like rubbing my face in their bling-bling. Like, is this what
it is? I got successful from telling stories, and finding music to fit these
stories that didn’t bore you, like, hood stories. Now you’ve got people rapping
about being executives. If you’re gonna rap about being executives, it’s cool,
but what happened to when the exec’s were never a part of the music? Like the
executives were the business and the ARTIST was the music! Like Run-DMC, they
didn’t rap about ballin’ out and running the record company, they were doing
music they loved. They got coerced to do records like “Walk this way” [with Aerosmith]
by the powers that be. Like, we don’t make music from the heart no more. But
some people actually make music just to live out their fantasies. I’m glad that
played out. I’m happy that you couldn’t rap about bling-bling when you were
broke. You eventually rapped yourself into a career. [It would have been like]
raping the game. Like stealing. We can rap about having fun again. We went
light-hearted on the lyrics. But we’re not stressin’ about the state of hip hop
on this record. We back to music. SH: Why did you and Kurupt
choose to work together? Why just you two? Kurupt: We were working on
“Ego Trippin’” at the time, with Snoop, and we were all trying to get Quik back
in the game. So many people were waiting for him. Quik: [background] I had
retired! Kurupt: Then Quik came to me
with a great idea and was like, “we could do a project together.” A solo album.
Quik: Kurupt was working on
three things – now, this is multi-tasking – Kurupt was on tour with Snoop,
working on his album “Street Lights,” AND working on Blaqkout with me and
knocked out Blaqkout in just a few months! This is retarded! Kurupt: We finished the
album in record time. I was like “Just tell me where and when to be.” And
whenever I wasn’t on tour, he told me when he’d be in the studio. He got the
beat, I come in, lay it on, the next time I hear the record it’s whole
different thing, and that’s the good thing about working with Quik is he puts
his heart into it. You lay your part and you get done and in a couple days or a
week you hear a whole different record. A classic record with your lyrics
involved. Quik’s just a good product manager in putting these things together.
That’s how fast it was. We kept it so professional; we took extra time for the
samples. And that’s how we came up with the project and finished it in record
time. SH: I really like the love
you obviously have for Quik. Kurupt: Well, you know. I
grew up to Quik’s music as well, so this is very important to me because
working with Quik is a privilege and you gotta take it as so. Anything with Quik
enhances my game as well, helps me to be better in this music industry and in
this game, as well. I learned a lot from an executive standpoint as well – how
he got his albums done, how he’s working it – and he brought people who was gonna
be working on my albums as well to the table, so we got more than just music
together. And that’s part of our magic, is our respect for each other and our
respect for the game that we are both involved in, and each of our attributes. SH: Quik said in an
interview that you, Kurupt, have grown as an artist. Would you agree with that?
Kurupt: Well, I’ve been in
the game since ’92 and I’ve made a lot of mistakes that were well-deserved
because it taught me to be the person I am today. I’ve learned a lot, a great
deal in this business, and I never stop learning. Like I said, Quik taught me
so much and I’m still learning as I go. K: Well, I gotta tell you
that your flow is bananas so far on the tracks I’ve heard and I can’t wait for
this album to finally drop. Is there anything else you want to say about
BLAQKOUT? Kurupt: Get ready for a real
treat. This isn’t your average record and hopefully fans will enjoy it and it
will gain some new fans. Everybody just have a ball with it. We worked really
hard on it. It took a lot of concentration dedication and we made this for our
enjoyment and to step away from the clichés in the regular records you be
hearing – Quik: It’s hard to do! Kurupt: — and to step outta
the box, which is difficult because once you have a fan base it’s hard to step
out of it. Some people will enjoy some records and some might not enjoy some
records but hopefully they’ll enjoy the whole project as we did. SH: They will. And I can’t
wait to enjoy the rest of the album. Thank you guys so much. Quik: Thanks, Kinga. SH: Thank you guys so
much. Good luck. Quik: Thank you. Enjoy.
ThoughtProcess 2009-05-05 11:17am |
Dope. I can't wait for this album to drop. |
Marlon 2009-05-06 06:07pm |
Good interview. |
|
Complex 2009-05-07 11:02am |
Nice |
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sharlabing 2009-05-07 11:34am |
very good look soundhustle! |
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ReneeSophia 2009-05-07 03:30pm |
I liked it. That song Addictive was a hot song. It's nice to hear the full story behind a beat. |
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ashlee 2009-05-07 11:39pm |
GREAT INTERVIEW! |
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CAPPY 2009-05-08 01:12am |
these dudez know about realll musicc!!!...good look getting this interview done...i hope their album sells |
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IamConcept 2009-05-10 04:40am |
THe album is going to be crazy. Kurupt is one of those under-rated cats. |
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CAPPY_PROLIFIC 2009-05-20 03:00pm |
O.G dudez in the game FOR SURE |
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