“Remember Compton’s in the house/and Quik is in the hood
sippin’ ‘yak with all my niggas/’cause it’s to the good
so don’t knock it till you try it/’cause Eiht he tried to knock it
but he still walking ’round with my nuts in his pocket (bitch!)“
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DJ Quik, “Dollaz N Sense,” Safe & Sound.
I don’t know where you were in October of 1994, but I sure as hell do. Tuesday, after school let out, my friend Jonathan called me up as if the world were coming to an end. “Dog, did you hear how Quik is straight clownin’ MC Eiht?” It was history in the making, because little did either of us know, it was the last time a male with a perm could make reference to another man’s genitalia and not have his hood pass immediately and permanently revoked. This scathing cut by DJ Quik, more or less, put Eiht’s career on life support for a good decade.
In light of Reverend Jesse Jackson‘s recent televised desire to turn Senator Barack Obama into a eunuch, now seems as good a time as any to re-evaluate any advice which comes from a so-called cultural leader who still sports a perm.
When people such as Al and Jesse critique Hip Hop it reeks of hypocrisy. For all of their good deeds and the cultural cache they’ve built by staging rallies every time the NYPD decides to shoot or tenderize another black male like a side of beef, all I can see is two jackleg preachers. When Bill Cosby makes a similar critique we can stomach it, somewhat. But at that very moment when Al or Jesse clear their throats, point that finger and cue up another one of their chitlin’ circuit sermons, there is cognitive dissonance. I instantly tune out because I don’t see them as leaders. I respectively see one of James Brown‘s former roadies and the man who unsuccessfully tried to trick us into believing he was the next Martin Luther King, Jr.
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I know what you’re thinking, “How can DJ Quik be a leader?” The mere mention of his name conjures up images of those tiny pink hair rollers and the rancid smell of a man getting a perm. This is the dude who made “Sweet Black Pussy” and rapped about how his sister helped him make an introduction into the drug game. If the recent episodes involving Rick Ross [click to read] and Akon [click to read] have taught us anything, it’s that, even in a somewhat weakened state, Hip Hop is still predicated on authenticity. So interestingly enough, this is part of what makes Quik, who shares the same loathsome hairstyle as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, a much more endearing figure. Whether or not you grew up in Southern California, you can relate, especially when he compares Denver, Oakland, and San Antonio to Compton. Besides, sexual promiscuity never stopped John F. Kennedy or Thomas Jefferson from being considered leaders.
Quik has been putting it down for almost two decades. He’s worked with Roger Troutman, Jay-Z [click to read], Ludacris [click to read], Talib Kweli [click to read], T.I. [click to read], The Game [click to read] and pretty much any Hip Hop artist worth mentioning. During his last outing, when he and AMG rechristened themselves as The Fixxers, Quik managed to do what very few artists outside of the south could. He found a way to merge his own production style with the current southern sound. On “So Good,” when you hear Quik, AMG and Rich Boy [click to read] share laughs and swap stories about turning women out, while borrowing a chorus from KRS-One [click to read] no less, it’s evolution. Can you find cultural upliftment on an album all about sex and partying? Hell no. But that doesn’t mean Quik is all party and bullshit.
“We did everything we were supposed to do to stop that muthafuckin’ gangbanging out here in these streets. I’ve been everywhere, homie. In Crip hoods, Blood hoods, everybody’s hoods because the shit is killing everybody. It’s like, ‘What the fuck?’ How can you be non-productive, regressive and explosive?” – DJ Quik, XXL July, 2000.
Unlike the self-aggrandizing campaigns of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Quik always separated his business from his pleasure. While Al and Jesse were in the offices of their respective dummy organizations trying to sex up the female employees, Quik took a grassroots movement to the streets. In addition to quotes like the one above, go back and look at the lead single from 1998’s Rhythm-a-lism, “You’z A Ganxsta.” Now that men are trying to become Crips and Bloods in their late twenties, it’s easy to forget that Quik could’ve easily milked his past affiliation with Compton’s Tree Top Pirus into a platinum plaque. Instead, he started a real “community revolution in progress” by denouncing gang warfare, and the album still went gold.
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“They had a standard that said Ice-T can’t rap against police. They had a standard that said you can’t rap against gays, and you shouldn’t. They had a standard against Michael Jackson saying something anti-Semitic. Where is the standard against ‘nigger,’ ‘ho’ and ‘bitch’?” – Al Sharpton.
Now let’s shift our focus back to the reverends. During 2007 Al Sharpton ran a corporate shakedown [click to read] on nearly 50 Fortune 500 companies like General Motors and Forest City Ratner on the basis that they didn’t “hire, promote or do business with [the black community] in a statistically significant manner.” Scared shitless, most of the corporations, including Forest City Ratner, either donated to Sharpton’s National Action Network, or just outright hired him as a consultant. Despite the millions he bullied from all those companies, somehow Sharpton still ended the 2007 fiscal year owing the IRS over $1.9 million. I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t see any of the millions “Uncle Al” raised on behalf of the black community. What’s worse is that during the uproar that ensued when Forest City’s corporate partner, Barclay’s, was rumored to have strong ties to both the African slave trade and the South African apartheid [click to read], Al Sharpton was nowhere to be found. Maybe he was out getting his conk touched up that afternoon. Maybe when you wear a process for that many decades the lye has a way of seeping into your scalp and altering your memory. Observe…
“I am sure Reverend Jackson would not say to me that he cradled Dr. King. I am sure that Reverend Jackson would realize that I was the person who was on the balcony with Dr. King and did not leave his side until he was pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Memphis. I am sure he would not say to me that he even came near Dr. King after Doc was shot.” – Reverend Ralph Abernathy.
One of the best ways to judge a leader is to see how they behave in a crisis, such as during the death of a dear friend. For over 40 years Jesse Jackson has been telling people he had Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s blood on him after cradling his head during his last breath. Aside from Reverend Abernathy, numerous bystanders will confirm Jackson was never even on the balcony during that fateful day at the Lorraine Hotel. Having your best friend shot is traumatic, no doubt. And if you weren’t there to help, the residual feelings of guilt can probably make you create a myth.
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The residual feelings of guilt could also cause you to reach deep down and make you perfect your craft. That’s what Quik did. When his protégé Mausberg was gunned down in July of 2000, Quik channeled all of his emotions into his work and crafted some of his best material with Balance & Options and Under tha Influence.
All of this is not to say that leaders don’t make stupid mistakes. Despite all of their right-wing, moral posturing, Jackson and Sharpton have both cheated on their wives with women from their respective organizations [click to read]. Later, both men gave their mistresses money directly from their organizations [click to read]. Does anyone else find it ironic that these men who are so vehemently opposed to rappers using the words “bitch” and “hoe” were exhibiting some rather bitch-like behavior? Quik sure as hell is no saint. One of the reasons he was laying low in recent years was because he spent five months in jail after reportedly pulling a pistol on his sister during an altercation. What’s the difference? A real leader admits their mistakes. Hopefully, as their ideology evolves, they learn from their mistakes and don’t repeat them.
If I’ve learned anything interviewing and writing about the Hip Hop artists I grew up listening to, it’s that most of them can barely sustain a career these days—let alone be considered leaders. Like many of you, my friends and I can see the 30-year-old marker quickly approaching. And while way too much has been made of “getting your grown man on” as opposed to simply being a responsible adult, it’s rather depressing to see people 10 years older than you repeating the same mistakes they did when you were listening to them in junior high school.
When Quik first grew his perm back, I was afraid he was regressing as opposed to continuing to making progress. It seemed like the curse of the perm had claimed yet another one. It turns out he was going back alright. Quik went back to the studio and worked with El Debarge, Teddy Riley and Snoop Dogg. Quik went and dusted of some of The Beatles’ old material, and used the inspiration to cut Murs’ new album on two-inch reels [click to read]. The ProTools aided southern bounce, which Quik seemed to master rather quickly, was ditched for his traditional warm, melodic sound. Much like his ’70s era predecessors from the Bloods and Crips, before the lure of fast cash, turf wars and crack cocaine, Quik went back in order to go forward.
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You’ll never see Quik in the pantheon of great, outspoken leaders like Malcolm X or even Dick Gregory, and that’s fine with me. But, as leaders go, you can keep Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. The perms they sport are not retro, they’re symbolic of a played out ideology that should’ve been straightened out decades ago. I think their time would be much better served taking inventory of their own manhood, as opposed to making empty threats against the Hip Hop community and Barack Obama’s testicles. Maybe if someone took a scalpel to their nether regions they could stop chasing ass long enough to focus on the real issues plaguing our communities. I’m not trying to sound like india.irie, but here’s still hope for the small minority of you still wearing perms out there. Here’s hoping one of Hip Hop’s most underrated contributors is somewhere sharing a laugh, some cognac and a perm kit with Katt Williams. You know who I’m talking about. Quik is the name.
