In the first published portion of D.O.C.’s discussion with HipHopDX, the author of the awe-inspiring album No One Can Do It Better (and large portions of other certified classics, including Eazy-Duz-It, Straight Outta Compton, 100 Miles And Runnin’ and Efil4zaggin) revealed that his pen-for-hire work for Dr. Dre has finally ceased, after a total of over 18 years spent constructing quotable verses for Eazy-E, N.W.A., Snoop Dogg and several other notable names that have walked the halls over the years at Ruthless Records, Death Row Records and Aftermath Entertainment.
Now in the remaining portion of The D.O.C.’s jaw-dropping Q&A, the ultimate insider to the history of the genre commonly referred to as Gangsta Rap breaks down his history with the likes of Suge Knight, Jerry Heller, Ice Cube, and maybe most notably, Eminem (who recently made a special request of the man whose aggressive flow on 1989’s “The D.O.C. & The Doctor” provided the prototype for Marshall Mathers’ truculent tone).
The man who was Snoop Dogg before Snoop Dogg, Game before Game, also elaborates on the dissolution of his longstanding professional relationship with Dr. Dre, providing previously unpublished details about how their “Formula” finally became toxic.
A little lengthy, but a must-read for anyone familiar with the role the simultaneous southern star and west coast forefather played in the careers of almost every artist to ever record to a Dr. Dre track, the following transcript documents one of the most influential emcees in Hip Hop history baring his soul in his “Against All Odds” moment.
Below is the truest shit The D.O.C. has ever spoke.
HipHopDX: I recently did an interview with Sir Jinx, and he revealed that you’re currently working on a documentary. So what exactly is the film about?
The D.O.C.: The whole Ruthless [Records break-up to Death Row Records creation] story is really just patches. It’s bits and pieces of the truth. None of these people really know what happened because I haven’t said anything yet. Most of the guys that are in-the-know aren’t saying [what really happened] because it benefits them not to say it. The truth as it is in the world now, it makes them look good. Which is cool, I’m not really – that shit never really bothered me. Because, when I lost my voice I didn’t mind playing the background, not necessarily being the guy who got the publicity or the this or the that. But, after 20 years it’s become time to really let the cat out of the bag, because if I don’t, no one will.
They were talking about doing an N.W.A. movie for a minute, and I knew off top that that shit could never happen. Number one, none of those muthafuckas really get along with each other good enough to do shit. And number two, everybody wants to tell a fraction of the story from their own perspective. And none of that shit coulda been true, because first off I wasn’t even in the movie. And you couldn’t have had N.W.A. like you had N.W.A. had I not left Dallas and came to California and helped those guys build songs. That’s just the facts. You wouldn’t of had it like that; you couldn’t of had it like that. [Dr.] Dre wouldn’t of had the career he had.
You actually would’ve never had Death Row had I not been in California. Because, Suge [Knight] wasn’t my bodyguard but he…rolled with me. It wasn’t him and Dre that got together and said, "Hey, let’s do this." It was Dre and I that got together and said, "Hey, let’s do this." Unfortunately, it was right after that [car wreck I was in] and I was going through a really hard time, really trying to come to grips with what had been taken away. So, I was just being a fuck-up. But, I wasn’t being such a fuck-up that I couldn’t pull Dre over here and say, “Look, nigga, this is what you need to do. This is what we need to do. Look at what [Eazy-E’s] doing to me. If he’s doing it to me, he could be doing it to you.” … So he and I got together with Suge and this other cat, [Dick Griffey of SOLAR Records], and we all started making plans. Unfortunately, I started falling deeper into the wrong shit, down the wrong hole. And even though I was putting in a majority of the money and a gang of the work to make that shit happen, when it all came down to bare fruit I just wasn’t able to grab my apples off the tree. ‘Cause my mind was somewhere way somewhere else.
That plus the fact that Dr. Dre was always somebody that I trusted, that I thought that even if I can’t watch my own back, Dre’s gonna watch my back. And that’s not to say that Dre’s not a great guy…he’s just not me. Like, if the situations were reversed, I couldn’t be him and he’d be me. ‘Cause it’s not in my character. My nature is sort of that of a giving cat. So, there’s no way that he and I can be in the same situation reversed.
When it comes to making music, those guys [in N.W.A.] didn’t know how to build songs back then. For lack of a better [description], they was just kinda street guys. And even though it was street music, music is like writing a book, it has to have a beginning, a middle and an end.
The documentary is a journey over these past 20 years. I’m going to let you guys see all the drama, all the bullshit, from the inside. I’ma give you an interesting story, that nobody knows about. When I first got to California, back in fuckin’ ’88, maybe ’87, I was sitting in the studio and playing at this little piano that was in this studio called Audio Achievements – where we did all the early N.W.A., Eazy-E shit. I was playing at this little piano and Eazy asked me if I wanted to go to this meeting. And to make a long story short, Eazy was [implying] that he was into this devil worshipping shit. … Now, I’m a young kid from Texas. I don’t know shit about gang banging, ‘cause the shit hadn’t happened in Dallas at that time. I don’t know shit about the streets really. And I damn sure don’t know shit about no muthafuckin’ devil worshipping. So, you can just imagine, I sat there at that piano kinda frozen. I acted like I didn’t even hear the shit that he was saying. He was talking about he wanted me to go to some meeting, and man, I played like I didn’t hear nothing that muthafucka said and kept doing what the fuck I was doing. … But, just that in itself can show you the kind of mind fuckery that was going on throughout those years, when I was just there trying to be creative. I found out later that it was just game [from Eazy-E]. It was game gone too far. Because I was so far ahead of these niggas, that the only way that they could keep me under thumb was to run super game on me. So now I don’t know, do I need to ask somebody about my money or is the devil gon’ come get me? I don’t know. I’m 18, I don’t know what the fuck to do. I just know I wanted to be the best muthafuckin’ rapper, and I seemed to be heading in that direction.
Here’s the plan [going forward for] what I wanna do: there’s a doctor in Florence, Italy. His name is Paolo Macchiarini – world-renowned transplant specialist. This is D.N.A. medicine we’re talking about. In other words, he uses stem cells. He’s already done two operations similar to the one that would be necessary to do to get me my voice back. One on a woman’s windpipe, and one in the area of the voice box called the larynx. There’s actually a woman in northern California I believe who just had that surgery, but it wasn’t D.N.A. because that’s not available [in the United States]. … I know it worked for her [though], because she had cancer [that] totally destroyed her voice box and they transplanted her a new one and now she can talk. What’s going on with Macchiarini in Italy [is D.N.A. medicine] and what they did for [a woman] was, they took master stem cells from her body, from three different points in her body, in a laboratory and they re-grew the windpipe from her stem cells. … It’s some real Star Trek shit. It’s so far beyond what they do in the United States that it’s really hard to believe that they could do shit like that.
[Writer’s Note: The portion of Q&A presented below picks up at the point in D.O.C.’s discussion with DX following the portion of Q&A presented in his previous news feature.]
The D.O.C.: But if [Dr. Dre] don’t [drop Detox] this year, then you gon’ have to quit lying. Cut that shit out.
DX: Yeah, it’s turned into what Axl Rose did with Chinese Democracy. You wait too long and then…
The D.O.C.: Then it’s fucked up. So now, the only thing that’s left is the story. And the only reason that y’all ain’t got the story yet is ‘cause I haven’t told it. Those guys can’t tell the story because they didn’t write it. I did.
Eazy-E didn’t even have a name really until right before I got to California. When “Boyz-N-The Hood” was made, the guy didn’t really even have a name. When I first got to California, [after Dr. Dre] called me in Texas and told me to come to California – [Dre said], “Nigga, we could be rich, if you just lived out here.” Well, shit, a broke-ass nigga from West Dallas, Texas, that’s all you had to say, I’ll be there in a minute. Borrowed whatever I could, and got my ass [out] there - slept on muthafucka’s couches. At first, [Dre] was planning on being my deejay. Because, Hip Hop was still so New York back then. It hadn’t made it to the west yet. But after we did Eazy’s [album, Eazy-Duz-It], Dre was like, “Eh, I don’t know about that deejay shit.” They hadn’t even done the N.W.A. album yet. But Eazy-E’s [single, “Boyz-N-The Hood”] took off so fast, he saw the future of the N.W.A. movement. And I can’t blame him. “Nigga, go get ya money.” ‘Cause I’m thinking, when I put this record out I’ma show y’all muthafuckas how to really rap around this bitch.
I was really arrogant back then. I used to tell them muthafuckas all the time, “If it wasn’t for me, y’all niggas wouldn’t have shit!” Which may be why niggas is trying to shit on me now, because payback is a muthafucka.
Once they got through with [recording Straight Outta Compton], it was pretty easy to see that that shit was outer space. But Eazy was fuckin’ niggas early in the game. [Ice] Cube saw that shit very early, and boned the fuck out. … If I wasn’t up there [at Ruthless] what the fuck would they have done? You wouldn’t have a muthafuckin’ Niggaz4Life record, who was gonna write it? And Eazy still fucked me on that record! But I’m a 19-year-old, 20-year-old kid, I don’t know no fuckin’ better. I’m up there with Dre. And Dre knew better. And he coulda did better. “Say man, is Eazy fucking you or something? You got to do something, dog. Don’t just let me be out in the wind like that. I’m giving you life, nigga.” Maybe it was a Texas [vs.] L.A. [divide], and them niggas really didn’t give a fuck about nothing except the skills that I had at that time.
But I refused to believe [those rumors about Dre’s sexual orientation], ‘cause me and Dre, we spent every day together. All his dirty laundry, I know all of that shit. Everything! [Laughs] And you ain’t heard me talking shit about the dude, ‘cause I don’t want him to look bad to nobody. I got love for him. I don’t ever want him – Matter fact, I used to get mad at him ‘cause I always wanted more for him than he did.
The actual name “Death Row” came from me. I actually wanted to call the label “Def Row,” ‘cause in my mind Dre was what Russell Simmons was to the east …. That’s how important he was. And then one of the other artists, a female named Jewell, she was like, “Wow, that’s cool, Death Row.” I was like, “Nah, Def Row.” And Dre was like, “Nah, nigga, Death Row ….” And then with all these thug-minded-ass muthafuckas around…it didn’t take long before that’s just what that was.
It was a dirty time. And if you really had a movie about that shit, it would fuck you up – from the beginning of Ruthless all the way through to the end of Death Row, and it showed the kind of niggas that could manipulate [Tupac's] death. I know.
DX: You know…what happened?
The D.O.C.: I know if he is. I know if Suge is the kind of nigga that could manipulate that. I know. I know everything.
[Even through everything], I still have no contempt for Eazy. Or Dre. Or Suge. Or none of these niggas. ‘Cause, it’s really none of their faults that I went through the shit I had to go through. It’s a G-O-D thang, it’s not a D.O.C. thang.
DX: So how much do you plan to present in this documentary? … How much of this do you really wanna rehash 20-plus years later?
The D.O.C.: Well, for me, it’s not really about the negative aspects of the story. What happened to me, you know, boo hoo, that was for Doc [to go through]. I just think the story is really neat. I think it makes a really cool story. [But] if you’re gonna tell it, tell that bitch right. I’m not afraid to shine a light on my fuck-ups. So by that same token, I shouldn’t be afraid to shine a light on your fuck-ups either – especially if it’s a part of the same story. If you fucked up, goddamn’t then you should have to deal with it the same way I did. And if nothin’ else, prove to another generation of young muthafuckas how to do it better than we did it.
I don’t think ‘Pac or [the Notorious B.I.G.] ended up the way that they shoulda ended up. I don’t think it shoulda went like that. [All] because greed, money and power went too far with niggas that don’t really have any money. Having a million dollars ain’t no fuckin’ money. These is muthafuckas [in power] running around here with multiple billions of dollars, that can buy and sell you…at a heartbeat, as if you were a slave. They can do that.
Muthafuckas was trying to get me to look at this video where Puff Daddy in drag – they supposed to be faggots. And everybody worship the devil, and all this ol’ shit. Now I was around Dr. Dre for fuckin’ 20 years, if that muthafucka is suckin’ dick, then something ain’t right. ‘Cause I ain’t seen no parts or pieces of none of that shit. And I was there the whole time. Ain’t no way you can be gay and get that shit past me. So, when they started selling that [story] so heavy, then I know that it’s just media gone crazy, sensationalizing bullshit.
So if anything, I want to tell the shit and make it pure, make it a beautiful story: the operation overseas…and getting that voice back. [I want to make the movie] if not just to travel the country, going to different colleges and talking to these kids about what’s really good, about what’s really positive and really beautiful about this music and this culture. To me, [that] is a hell of a happy ending.
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