DJ QUIK: “JAY WORTHY IS THE FUTURE OF MY MUSIC.”

“I told Problem I was retiring, then he came over to my house and played some Jay Worthy, next thing I know we had 50 songs recorded together.”

In early March, Compton’s very own Jason Martin – aka Problem- initially teased what we now know to be his next collaborative project with DJ Quik, when he posted a picture of himself opening a bottle of Champagne with the sole caption ‘Chupacabra’.

Whilst most didn’t realize what it meant at the time, what would follow had every right to get people excited; a mere two days later, the artist announced new music was on the way, sharing a photograph of himself alongside the veteran DJ Quik and Jay Worthy, who has been the architect on the West Coast for quite some time now.

Naturally, the infatuation around the project started to build up, with DJ Quik and Problem exclusively performing Eazy Call live on stage, the song, which features The Game and Big Hit officially came out a couple of weeks later, and samples the legendary Tupac song Heartz of Men, which DJ Quik produced almost 30 years ago, and sampled it for the new project.

The full track list for Chupacabra dropped earlier this month, and music fans can look forward to hearing different sounds. It will feature some heavy hitters, like Curren$y, Lil Jon, KAYTRANADA, Ab-Soul, Ceelo Green and so many more. Upon the release of the album on the 14th of June, Problem and DJ Quik hosted a listening party at Xzibit’s new Cannabis shop just outside of Bel Air just a couple of days ago, the shop opened earlier this year, the latter, naturally attended the party, as did Wiz Khalifa, Problem, Jay Worthy and DJ Quik, the turnout was quite impressive to say the least.

In front of a packed crowd, Jason Martin addressed his previous collaboration with DJ Quik in 2017, and talked about the importance of this album. “We dropped Rosecrans, we didn’t get a chance to do any of this, no music videos, no tours, no everything, we thought: ‘Let’s do it right this time’ ‘But this album wouldn’t have been possible without Jay Worthy, who worked as the A&R for this record’, DJ Quik mentioned.

I caught up with Quik about Jay Worthy’s role and involvement in this project, this album and his many retirements. “It seems like we can no longer talk about the West Coast without mentioning the unavoidable Jay Worthy...” I spoke. “Jay Worthy and Larry June are the future of the west coast, everybody knows it, they brought an officiality to Problem and I’s record Chupacabra. I got to reciprocate Larry June.

But Jay Worthy is our A&R, so he made all this shit happen. On Sway in the morning a couple of months back, The Alchemist explained that it was Jay Worthy who first introduced him to Larry June, when they eventually released their collaborative album. People perhaps need to start giving him his flowers.

“He’s (Jay Worthy) a beast, look and the funny thing is he’s young, so he doesn’t know how to speak to the public yet, out of sorts, he’s not really used to that, he’s like: ‘I put y’all together.’ You know, he’s like the connect, he doesn’t want anybody to see the dope in his trunk.

How did you guys connect?

Problem. He was over at my house, because I retired, and I told him I quit music, he brought his laptop over and he was like: ‘I’m going to play some music.’ I said to him: ‘Wow, what is that?’ ‘This is my homeboy Jay Worthy’ he said. So, he ended up coming over, and before you know it 30 days later, we had two albums done, about 40-50 songs.

[…] I’m only 25 years old, I can’t lie and I say I grew up on Ice Cube, Tupac and everything else coming out from the West, but I grew up with a bunch of different music and sound, so for me when people talk to me about the West Coast, I refer back to GTA V (laughter), and I ended up listening to a lot of radio stations from the game, like West Coast Classics and Radio Los Santos, and that’s when I was introduced to you.

Dollaz + Sense is on there, right?

Absolutely it is.

The point in trying to make is, I listen to a lot of Jay Worthy, and he reminds me a lot of what the West Coast was about, with his samples and use of G-Funk, what does the future of the West Coast look like?

He’s not just the G-Funk era, he’s also with the KAYTRANADAs, the Channel Tres, the whole movement, it’s not just a sound it’s a political movement, this is our neighborhood. He’s expanding, he’s taking what we did, which is what you’re supposed to do, we did it ourselves, we took Kurtis Blow and all that other music and sampled it and tried to reach a broader audience with it. He’s doing that with what we thought was just homegrown music, he’s taking it and he’sbroadening out, he’s putting it into different horizons, and I love it. Now we just got to be able to get him comfortable to do more interviews and talk. […] What’s dope about him is he has his own pocket, the way he raps and puts it down, he feels something in his head that he just follows, he doesn’t let the music take him out of it, or the beat. The beat must fit him, because he’s bigger than the beat. He’s hot as fuck. And he’s connected, he brought all these people here.

Is he the future of the West Coast? I ask.

“He’s the future of my music.” He replies.