"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!)"

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.

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. Continued on page 2 »