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DJ Quik recently revealed that he almost lost his life over a leaked 2Pac CD.
The veteran rapper/producer recalled the memory during a recent appearance on Talib Kweli’s People’s Party podcast. Quik recalled a memory with the incident ending up with a gun to his face after a bootleg copy of 2Pac’s 1996 All Eyez On Me LP fell into the wrong hands.
Spreading Like Wildfire
DJ Quik explained that it was his security guard that must have taken the 2Pac CD out of his car and began sharing it with their friends. Soon after, unauthorized copies spread like wildfire throughout Los Angeles.
“I almost got killed over a 2Pac bootleg! I had a machine gun put in my face!” Quik said at the 48:20 mark. “But I was still defending him, I was like, ‘Fuck it, do what you gotta do.’ I can’t run! This muthafucka got 30 shots in it, so I’ma just man up and take this shit.
“It was in my car and my security at the time used my car. He took the CD out and let his homeboys hear it. ‘Man, let me get a copy of that!’ ‘Cool’ So I’m in the studio, proofreading and listening to these mixes, making sure that they sound good. And I would give Suge a CD or ‘Pac a CD.”
DJ Quik Got On The Wrong Person’s Radar
The leak would eventually land on Death Row CEO Suge Knight’s radar.
“The CD ended up in the neighborhood at Earthquake Sounds, a car shop or whatever,” Quik continued. “And dudes up there called Suge and was like, ‘Aye man, you know n-ggas up here playing the new 2Pac shit y’all working on?’ He’s like, ‘What?!’
“So I get a call, ‘Hey man, come up to the office.’ And I already know what them Death Row meetings, when they call you randomly at like 4:20. ‘Aye, fight traffic, get up here.’ I’m like, ‘Aww, this finna be some bullshit.’”
Quik added: “We get up there and we confront it, and then a fight started in the fucking Death Row [office]. It was scrapping and shit. After the fight was done, my dumb-ass, I’m like, ‘Man, we just got accused of something we didn’t do!’ I’m like, ‘What did you do? Who did you give the CD to?’ [He’s like], ‘This guy.’”
Check out DJ Quik’s interview on Youtube below:
Tracking Down The Source
Quik and his security tracked down the culprit to his home where a fight would eventually break out. However, this time fists weren’t the only weapons involved.
“So we go over to this guy’s house,” he said. “He’s talking to us. He didn’t do it, yada yada, somebody else did it. So me, in my infinite wisdom, I take off on him … I’m fighting the dude and he dropped his Hennessy, and I think he was more mad [about that] than me actually swinging on him.
“He told his homeboy, ‘Man, blast this muthafucka!’ And my man just pulled out a TEC [gun noises]. I’m just… cold. Like, ‘I’m dead over this dumb-ass 2Pac tape.’”
A Stroke Of Luck
Luck was on Quik’s side however when his security guard snatched the gun before and real damage could be done. Though that didn’t stop him from suffering a brutal beatdown.
“So I’m fighting with this guy, then I end up fighting with the other guy, and the other guy kicked me all in the head and shit, I’m on the ground getting stomped and shit,” he remembered. “I get up and I’m still fighting this guy. It’s like, ‘Man, I can’t fight both! Help me fight these muthafuckas!’
“And then we had to go to a party that night still, a Whispers party that Death Row was throwing, so we end up at the Whispers party. N-ggas was like, ‘You alright?! Y’all need to go the hospital!’ ‘Nah, we cool, fuck it. Charge it to the game.’”
Quik added: “The guy that supposedly did it, I ended up making amends with him. I went and hung out with him a couple of years ago and apologized because I shouldn’t have did that. You know, Death Row was the single most dangerous record company in the world, but if you had on the chain, nothing ever happened to you.”
DJ Quik and 2Pac Turning Violence Into A Brotherhood
Towards the end of the interview, Quik revealed that his bond with 2Pac only grew stronger once Pac learned of the fight.
“2Pac found out that I fought these n-ggas over his shit getting leaked and he loved me infinitely,” he said. “We was two peas in a pod. We did so much shit together, we used to hang out and film — I just took it for granted like, ‘He gonna be here always. He out of jail now and he gonna stay out.’”
However, that doesn’t mean that the two didn’t occasionally butt heads from time to time.
“[After All Eyez On Me], we did a short little tour. We was in Louisiana, New Orleans Arena killing that shit,” he added. “And then he got mad at me and wanted to fight me because I jumped on the speakers and he told Suge, ‘He stealing my fucking show!’ I’m like, ‘Bro, we been jumping on speakers. And I got that from Bobby Brown!’
“Instead of us fighting, what Suge would have us do is — or he wouldn’t have us do it, but he wasn’t opposed to it — we’d just go in the weight room and lift it out … I beat him. I got like three more in. We had like 100-something pounds. And then [a fight] never happened, it was back cool.”
Quik added: “God, I miss him. He should so be here — him and [Eazy-E]. He’d be doing movies right now. He would’ve been the Black Quentin Tarantino, he would’ve been Sam Jackson. He’d be doing the same shit Ice Cube did with all the Fridays.”
