411 Music Interview: Quincy Jones III (QD3)
Posted by Tony Farinella on 10.25.2007
411's Tony Farinella sits down with QD3 for a revealing interview about life, his father, music, 2pac, and a whole lot more!!
Quincy Delight Jones III can do it all. He's a Swedish-American composer, music producer, film producer and author. He's also the son of the legendary Quincy Jones. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing him, and we talked about a lot of interesting topics. We talked about his father, 2pac, the current state of Hip-Hop, his company, and a whole lot more. This interview covers it all. You get to see the personal side of him and hear about growing up in Sweden and all of the struggles that he faced, and you also get to see his musical side and what gets his creative juices flowing. I hope you enjoy this interview.
TONY: Tell me a little bit about the documentary, Who Shot Ya?
QD3:Who Shot Ya is basically an in-depth look into the whole phenomenon of getting shot, and I think a lot of times Hip-Hop lyrics can be misleading and focus on the bravado aspect of getting shot. These are all real situations with recovery time and the trauma that you get from the whole process. What we want to do is humanize the whole phenomenon by hearing the full stories from the artists and let the viewers draw their own conclusions. The stories that we've come across so far all feature interesting lessons learnt, forced self reflection, elements of surprise and depth that oftentimes is not related in rap lyrics. The more we delve into the topic, the more I realize what kind of impact this film could have on our viewers, especially this generation.
TONY: What does it take to not only survive, but also thrive in the music business?
QD3: I think you have to be a little bit naive, because everybody warns you before you get into the record game or the film business that it's a pretty rough game. And I think that most of the people that make it probably have no idea of exactly how tough it is. I think that's what really keeps you going is, on some level, a naiveté to what it really takes to get through. I think that you're always probably the closet to your objective when you feel like giving up. Whenever you're at those points, you just gotta keep pushing, because it's really faith.
TONY: I want to backtrack a little bit here with this interview. How did your passion for music start in the first place? Do you remember when you heard your first record?
QD3: I do, man. I was like 2 or 3, and I was still living in L.A. at the time. And I remember that my two favorite artists when I was 2 were Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder. I remember my parents used to play music and burn incests and all that back in the 60's, and I used to lay, like when I was 2-years old, with my ear right on the woofer and have my hand around the speaker and just hold it. I guess I liked it from day one, and I liked the vibrations that the speakers were giving off. That's the first time that I remember hearing music. Superstition by Stevie Wonder was my favorite song when I was like 2.
TONY: You also grew up in Sweden. How did your time in Sweden help shape you as an artist and as a person?
QD3: Growing up in Sweden, I think it actually helped, because Hip-Hop, at the time, even before the Internet, it was very viral, so we would get all the underground tapes and all the break-dance videos and stuff that was out in the streets in New York or whatever. We would get em' in Sweden, but the difference is there was no coastal bias. I think the upside of that is that you hear the best from everywhere, and you end up having a broader pallet to draw from in terms of flavors and that sort of thing. In America, I think you can get regionalized a little bit, so I think in that sense it helped. Plus, when you're living in a place where nobody has access to the artists or to the main creators of the culture, I think it makes you more appreciative and it makes you really study what everybody's doing. And you pay more attention. I remember when I first moved to New York in 86', I knew most of the culture and there was no major transition period. So, I think it gives you a bird's eye perspective.
TONY: Because of all you went through as a child with your parents divorce, do you feel like you were forced to grow up in a hurry?
QD3: Definitely. Definitely. I grew up with a single mom since I was 4-years-old, who was drug/alcohol-addicted and pretty free-spirited, quote unquote, and we moved from Beverly Hills to a public housing building, so I definitely grew up with a lot of freedom and a lot of responsibility. And I think a lot of people may assume that I had a silver spoon in my mouth, but the way my parents divorced, that wasn't really the case. I saw and did a lot early in life, we got evicted every 8-12 months, I went to 16 schools before 10th grade, bumped my head a few times, but I think it was beneficial in the long run, because I was able to see both extremes and it's given me a unique vantage point for my line of work.
TONY: How much of your parents divorce did you understand and comprehend? I mean, you were pretty young.
QD3: I never thought about it until I turned 15-years-old. My parents got divorced when I was 3 or 4, and me and my mother and sister moved to Sweden. I was probably too young to process it. And I didn't think about it until I was going through a photo album when I was 15-years-old, and I was like, "Wait a minute, we don't really know each other that well." And I'd visit him in L.A. on summer break, but for the rest of the year I was in another country. I would sometimes bring Michael Jackson records to school (in Sweden) to show my friends what my father did, and they would laugh and think I was lying because we lived in public housing. And it kind of struck a nerve, and I started thinking about it a little more. Then I was around 16-years-old, and I moved to East Harlem, New York and later the South Bronx, and then to L.A. Once I moved to L.A., we started bonding a lot more. Now we're good friends and we're also very alike in many ways.
TONY: You talked about your mother earlier and her battle with drug addiction. Personally, my mother passed away after a long battle with prescription medication and alcohol. If someone is reading our interview and dealing with a similar situation in their family, what's your advice on how to deal with it?
QD3: Sorry to hear that, it's tough, because in my situation I tried to help her my entire life and tried to "fix" the situation. And I was not able to do it. So I would say try to be as objective as you can and try to have compassion for your parents. Also know that it's not your fault, that's the main thing.
It's up to you if you want to break the family cycles. With the pain comes long term benefits, and I might not have been drawn to socially relevant media had it not been for my upbringing and some of the stuff that I went through when I was younger: Having seen both extremes of society first hand (rich/poor), having to grow up quick and moving a lot gave me the tools, drive and empathy that I needed for the job I want do now which is build an (urban) multimedia company (qd3.com) that creates programming of substance that is relatable, empowering, deals with "real" issues, is entertaining and has residual value to viewers. My background gave me the ability to relate to all walks of life and levels of society organically, from the ghetto to the elite, so I feel I was put in a position to build helpful bridges of understanding between various demographics through media. So my advice is believe in yourself and try to find a way to turn your past into a benefit. Painful experiences give you drive, strength and compassion to do bigger things than you would otherwise have been capable of, use it as fuel.
TONY: Now that you're a parent with kids, have you learned from your past experiences with your own family and do you apply those lessons to your children?
QD3: Definitely. I feel like another benefit from things happening to you is that you're able to see what certain situations are like, and then when you have your own kids, you can try to do certain things differently. And not judging what my parents did, because I feel like that's how evolution is implemented, and we learn from each other. If you receive pain in one area of your life, you can either end up in a position where you repeat history, or you try to do things differently. I try to spend as much time with my kids as possible and make time for the family thing. I try to be very hands-on with my kids. I make it a point to go fishing with them and take time to recognize who they are while they are still looking to me for those experiences.
TONY: From talking to you, you seem very relaxed and very happy with your life. How have you been able to move on and not let the past affect your future?
QD3: Overall my life has been blessed, and I have pretty big dreams and hopes and goals for where I wanna go, and I feel like that's where I want to focus my energy on, ideally. And everybody has demons that they deal with here and there, but there are so many things that I would not be able to have compassion/empathy for or relate to had my life not taken the path it did, and each day I'm more grateful for my experiences, over time, and they've become gifts and useful tools.
TONY: When you collaborate with an artist, what's that process like? How do you bring together both visions to make one complete package?
QD3: Personally, I just follow my instincts and follow my heart. I've never worked with anybody that I didn't like creatively. And I've turned major, major artists down that I wasn't 100 percent into. I try to always love everything I do, and everything else sort of falls into place naturally. Passion and love for what you do takes you a long way, because I grew up in Sweden, and we had no access to Hip-Hop whatsoever. And I remember in 86', because of the whole notion that Hip-Hop was a fad, they were saying that the culture was gonna end. So, I moved to New York, just to catch the tail end of it, and I would have been happy just working with one rapper, coming back, getting a job, and calling it a day, that was the plan. And then I got to New York, and it took on a life of its own, and I stayed in it and never went back. So, I would say love and passion will take you a lot of places. It took me further than I would have expected to ever go. And I think my father would tell you the same thing for his career.
TONY: As far as your father, how much do you use him as an influence in your career?
QD3: He was definitely an influence, because he did publishing, he did movie scoring, he did records, and other business ventures. And I think it showed me how to be versatile and how to think big by example. I started doing movie scoring and record producing right out the gate, and a lot of times it takes you, like, five to ten years to actually get paid work in the production side of things. So if you can do film and television scoring, which is more like a regular job, you get paid whether the record sells or not. In that sense, he was a great role model, because I saw him doing so many different things, and I grew up thinking that's how you're supposed to do it. I was definitely influenced by that.
TONY: When you were growing up, was it hard to separate your father the musician from your father at home?
QD3: Having grown up in Sweden, a socialist country where not a lot of weight is placed on famous or wealthy people, I always looked at him as a human being, not his persona. I don't think I really "got it" until I was much older. It was harder to deal with the "kid of a famous person/silver spoon" projections I got hit with once I moved to the U.S. I went from no one believing who my father was in Sweden because of where we lived, to everyone wanting to ask questions about what it was like to be his son, so it was a strange transition.
TONY: How close are you and your dad today?
QD3: We're pretty close. We're like friends, and I think a lot of times when you have a father/son relationship there can be dynamics. And I think we were able to avoid a lot of that, just by becoming friends. In some ways, it's less complicated. Whenever we meet up, we always have these marathon discussions about everything under the sun from technology advances to world economy, generational differences, life lessons etc.
TONY: From watching him on television, he seems to command a lot of respect. Whenever he walks into a room, people take notice of him.
QD3: Oh, definitely. He's a really soulful guy, and he's a straight up Pisces. He's a real loving kind of guy and warm, so he's got a lot of soul to him. He's also very young spirited, and knows all the latest slang etc. On some levels, he never became like your stereotypical star, if you will. He's definitely a human being with a lot of soul and love to it, and when you spend time with him, he's very warm and down to earth. He's just cool, and people respond to that.
TONY: I'm sure you get a ton of questions about your relationship with 2pac, so I'm sorry to bother you with even more questions about him. (laughs) But are you surprised that he's still so popular today, and people still talk about him?
QD3: I'm not really that surprised, because it's not that often where artists, especially within Hip-Hop, reveal their entire being to their audience. And it seems like whenever somebody does that, for instance, you have a lot of rappers who only portray a certain side to their audience and they take a lot of care to kind of construct their lyrics in a way that makes them look a certain way. And with 2pac, he might have one song one day called Dear Mama, where he's paying homage to his mother and everything she did for him. And then the next song on that album is a song about a bitch. (laughs) And I think what that does is it lets people see that, "He's just like me. One day I wake up and I'm mad at my girl, and I'm gonna call her one thing. The next day, I may be in love with her." And that's how life is. Whenever artists are honest like that, it seems like it really, really works. And I think 2pac really stuck that nerve, where people were like, "You know what? This guy is putting his life on 24 tracks and letting us know exactly where's coming from." And I think people appreciated that. It's similar to Bob Marley or Marvin Gaye.
TONY: I'm sure it's so hard to put into words, but what do you think made 2pac so powerful and so loved?
QD3: I think it was the honesty. One huge piece that people miss out on is that he was prepared. When you see him run in the studio and drop a verse in 20 minutes and complete entire songs in an hour and all the great things that he did, I think what people fail to realize is how much preparation went into it. 2pac was a student. He would read books over and over to make sure he understood every single page. He would ask people questions about the book. He'd read books that fell far outside out of his field of expertise, just to be well-rounded. So, by the time he got the platform and got his record deal, he had taken acting classes, dance classes, poetry classes, and all that reading. He came prepared, and I think people don't realize that. That, to me, is what made him great. He was actually prepared. You could have put 2pac in a movie or on a record, and he'd go number one with that. But, also, you could put him in a room with business people, elite people, or people from the streets, and he could relate to everybody. And I think it's that universal sense that he had that resonates with people. It's the truth.
TONY: Do you think rappers get overlooked a lot of times? I mean, people seem to focus on their lyrics and not the passion and pain behind a lot of their albums
QD3: I do. I do. And I think it's confusing, too, because you have different audiences for different sub-genres of Hip-Hop. And I think sometimes people lump it all up into one thing. The whole gangsta thing, apparently, most of the actual consumers for gangsta rap aren't from the inner city communities. So, I think that's very misleading. I think it's misleading, because a lot of times what the labels are dictating is very different from what the community wants. What rappers do is when they go to a label, and the label tells them that we're looking for this, that, or the other, if they want to make a living making music, they conform to what the label is asking for. And I think that's misleading as well. You might have a rapper who has a lot to say and wants to really get deep and soulful and speak on messages, and if the labels don't get it, he may not have a platform. So, I think that's another area that probably needs to be looked into in addition to just blaming the artists.
TONY: Tell me a little bit about BEEF.
QD3:BEEF is series of films about Hip-Hop feuds. We had just finished the 2pac film, Thug Angel, and I was looking through our leftover footage, and he was a lot more aggressive in this footage. So, I was trying to figure out a way to translate that aggression in a way that would offer insight to the viewer. Also, when 2pac passed away, he was close friends of my family, and him and I had done lots of music together, so that impacted our family hugely, and also, I saw a lot of his friends and family that were relying on him for guidance and income left to fend for themselves. When he passed away, their whole infrastructure went away. And the public never saw that devastation. All they knew was that it was an exciting beef. I wanted to humanize these situations and show exactly how these situations do impact these people. And, like I said, I wanted to really humanize it. Knowing that there's a lot of interest in the sensational aspect of beefs, we figured we might as well use it as a platform to push through other messages. So, that's why you see 2pac's mom in there talking about the loss. Anything that we can do to humanize these situations is really the reason why we made the films. And, also, for instance, 2pac could have been a great leader today, and we lost him over one punch in Vegas, which, to me, is very senseless. If you're gonna battle, do it on records and keep it there and then the streets is something separate, because we can't afford to lose two more leaders like we did with Biggie and 2pac. That was really the motivation for making that film.
TONY: Speaking of record battles, how did the battle between Kayne and 50 Cent benefit each artist? Also, how do you think it hurt them?
QD3: Good question. I think it helped them in the sense that it polarized the buying audience, and it probably drove sales. In terms of the downside, the only thing I can think of and what we need to be mindful of is to not let the hype overshadow the importance of the music and the sincerity of the message in your music. I also really like that Kanye is focusing on his live show, and we need more of that in Hip Hop.
TONY: We've seen a number of rappers in the movie business lately. What rappers have made the best actors?
QD3: Obviously, I think 2pac was probably the best, because he was formally trained from an early age. I think Ice Cube is great. Ice Cube is a mentor of mine, and I remember when he was writing Friday's and he acted the whole thing out for us in the studio, and he was just a really well-structured businessman, and I respect him a lot. In terms of just the straight acting abilities, I would have to say 2pac to this day.
TONY: When you're scouting talent, what do you look for? What needs to stand out?
QD3: A music artist?
TONY: Yes.
QD3: Personally, I always look for: "What is this artist contributing that currently doesn't exist? What's unique to this artist that they're bringing to the world? Where's the substance, ya know?" I look for substance first, because, in my opinion, substance is timeless. Substance and message and a realistic view of what you want to project to your audience, because a lot of times you have rappers who are incredible lyricists and incredible writers and they can even come up with hit songs, but their vision for themselves is different than what the audience wants from them. And, I think almost every time when you have an artist that's really successful, like Eminem or 50 cent, they know their sizzle, so they know exactly how to talk to their audience and what to put out to their audience that's in line with what the audience is expecting. We have an upcoming show at QD3.com where we use this criteria to hand select artists who we feel are capable of leading and being leaders, and we do mini bio's that allow the viewer to see who they are through and through, and not just a music video.
TONY: Finally, what are your plans for the future?
QD3: Well, I've always been a huge tech-head, and the reason why I started aggregating all this footage was originally to do a broadband channel, and this was like back in 94' or 95'. While waiting for deeper broadband penetration, I decided to prove our creative vision on DVD via the QD3 DVD Collection which worked out well, and we've sold almost 2 million DVDs to date. We have a library of about 2000 hours of content. Now that the new media landscape is becoming a reality, we're putting a lot of energy into these new platforms, and this is where my passion lies and the world I feel I was built for.
We've created a QD3 broadband channel beta (QD3.com), and we have a top rated QD3 VOD channel with Comcast, several mobile deals, also DVD, TV and feature film partnerships. We want to make these platforms available to up and coming filmmakers, artists and actors, and we take submissions for the platforms on our site QD3.com. Anything from new media and short form to feature films or TV projects. We just hired Paul Campbell from Microsoft as president of our company. If a new urban network started today and they were focusing more heavily on new media platforms, with a bridge to traditional outlets, that's where we're at. We want to embrace this generation where they are, which is online, mobile and TV, DVD, theatrical etc. We also just closed a new feature film and DVD deal with Genius Products (Owned by the Weinsteins) that we're really excited about. Some people are saying that the urban game lacks creativity, and we see it as an opportunity. Our mission is to redefine and expand the current definition of "urban" focusing on quality and substance, and it's not just the inner cities anymore, it's a psychographic vs. a demographic. We jokingly call our demo beige as "urban," and it now covers everything from extreme sports to Hip Hop.
