https://soundcloud.com/npr-microphone-check/dj-quik-x-npr
After 24 years in the music business, the producer and rapper from Compton, Calif., knows what’s going on. He told Microphone Check studio secrets, a Rick James story, and all about the funk.
“You gotta get funky to make records that give people the frown face when they hear it,” he says. “You know, George Clinton-style. That’s what George and them used to do. George and them didn’t bathe. So I started doing that. … It’s a different attitude when you go in the studio all fastidious and clean. You don’t want to get down. Like, ‘Hey. Look at my watch. My shoes are white. I’m not gon’ party.’ You know what I mean? ‘I ain’t finna write no song. I’m finna take some pictures of me.’ You know, that’s them days. But we was in there getting stinky. And it got on the music.”