In a new interview with US magazine – producer Quincy Jones says that any unreleased Michael Jackson music should not be released and says he can’t be compared to Kanye West. See excerpts below:
Us: Speaking of Michael Jackson, some of his old stuff is being released now as a new album. Thoughts?
QJ: I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet. Somebody called me up and asked me if it was Michael, and I said it sounds like Michael. But it’s backed up by so many voices where I can’t really dig down deep enough or I haven’t really had time to dig deep enough to identify it. But no way it should be coming out. It should have all stayed in the vault.
Us: Is there anyone now that you think has the spark that Michael did?
QJ: Akon, Ludacris or Usher. A lot of them do, but the opportunities aren’t there anymore. I’m worried about the young singers and songwriters in the business now. It really is a rough time. It doesn’t mean a damn thing because they still steal everything. We’re going to have to figure it out, man. I don’t know what the answer is.
Us: Kanye West is similar to you in that he’s the producer everybody wants to work with in the last decade….
QJ: How man? No way. Did he write for a symphony orchestra? Does he write for a jazz orchestra? Come on, man. He’s just a rapper. There’s no comparison. I’m not putting him down or making a judgement or anything, but we come from two different sides of the planet. I spent 28 years learning my first skill. I don’t rap. It’s not the same thing. A producer has to have some sort of skills that enable him to be a producer. It’s totally different to know what to do with 16 woodwinds you know from piccolos down to bass clarinet. It’s a whole different mindset. No comparison. None.
Alrighty Then.
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While I wouldn’t try to compare Quincy Jones to Kanye West musically calling Kanye “just a rapper” is far from the truth. If you read the Complex Mag piece about the production of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy it’s clear Kanye has the same amount of respect from his peers today as Quincy did during his most productive years.
A lot of You Niggers have that ” crabs in a bucket mentality”. All he had to do was give the young man his props. We all know you made thriller Quincy! You are just a slave nigger and that’s all you’ll ever be! When are all these old Niggers going to start a real black major label, and stop giving all their money to these dirty Jews. Niggers are such slaves, ha ha ha!
AHAHAH Chun is back lmao. Where have you been? Getting but fucked by Bill O’Reilly all this time?
please read Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones….
Q went in, haha
twss
Q makes sense, he made music from scratch, kanye just samples old music and puts a beat on it, but Q needs to know that things now have a 24 hour turn around, music needs to be put out constantly to keep a buzz
I hate when people make that drastic over simplification of hip hop production. There’s a lot more to it then just taking an old song and putting a beat to it. Sure there are lazy producers who do that simple bullshit but Kanye is not one of them.
Are you kidding me? 70 percent of kanye’s music are sampled, I’m not taking nothing away from him cause I love it, but it is what he does. Or maybe broaden your ears to other music that he’s listening to and you will see.
Actually like 95 percent of Kanye productions use samples but my point is sampling is harder then most people make it out to be. Especially when Kanye does it because he often uses 3 or 4 different samples in one song. Quincy is great but you listen to the hip-hop production on his latest album you can hear that he doesn’t really have a grasp on how hip-hop is suppose to sound. People act like because someone uses samples they’re taking the easy route but the fact is it’s pretty difficult.
Agreed
first off.
you said how hip hop is SUPPOSED to sound. wrong. Hip hop sounds how its best current musicians want it to sound. Kanye’s soul sampling is only one such aspect and in no way reflects how hip hop is supposed to sound. there is no blueprint – no set canon of rules that hip hop producers need to live by. the only rule is that you can spit over it. that’s it.
next. i’ve both produced sampled music and I taught myself how to read and compose. sampling music – even layered samples – is like 10 times easier than playing music on instruments which in turn is like 10 times easier than composing for multiple instruments.
so there is nothing wrong with quincy’s production re: hip hop save the fact that YOU DIDN’T LIKE IT. also older niggas tend to make less aggressive music and a lot of hip hop’s appeal is its aggressiveness.
Quincy’s right – he’s conducted orchestras. He’s in no way comparable to Kanye West – who plays the piano one index finger at a time (runaway).
no one is saying sampling is easy. I take that back – sampling is easy as fuck. i learned how to sample in 10 minutes. it’s orders of magnitude easier than composing from scratch.
also re: sampling being the easy route: it is by definition. it was a way for musicians with no formal training to make music – it’s the EASY ROUTE BY DEFINITION.
Your whole brain is sideshow.
@blyx
My god dude, I’ll out it like this so I don’t hurt anybody else feelings. Kanye cannot do what Quincy does but Quincy also can’t do what Kanye does. You may like Quincy’s hip-hop records but the majority of people don’t feel the same way sorry buddy. Quincy’s lack of aggressiveness has nothing to do with what’s lacking in his music. “All Falls Down”, “Heard’em Say” and “Runaway” aren’t aggressive songs but they work. But that’s besides the point, all that I am saying is Kanye is comparable to Quincy not because of the music they make but the respect they have among the artist of they’re generation AND THAT’S THE FUCKING COMPARISON THAT US MAGAZINE WAS MAKING……AND THAT’S WHY I SAID HIS ANSWER WAS INCORRECT!!!
And by the fucking way Quincy says on his website that US magazine took his words way out of context so all of this arguing is pointless.
@ sideshowRaheem
ok. i’ll hit bullet points for niggas who can’t spare the brain cells to digest normal conversation.
-sampling is easier than composing.
-what kanye does is therefore easier than what quincy does and can do.
-quincy CAN produce hip hop (whether or not you like it or not. i never said i did – in fact i don’t.). Kanye CANNOT compose original music or conduct symphonies. quincy therefore is a GREATER musician in terms of capability. Analogy: a basketball player who averages 10 rebounds a game is fundamentally inferior to a player of same size, age who averages 10 points and 10 rebounds a game.
-conclusion: quincy cannot be compared to Kanye as Quincy is a musician whereas Kanye is a producer.
re: feelings hurt. yours were obviously. you’re them type of niggas that feel like hip hop is the start and end of everything. old ass nigga. Get a passport, homeboy.
LOL
It’s almost disrespectful for them to compare kanye to him based solely on the fact that “everyone wants to work with him.” It would be like comparing jermaine dupri or timbaland to him in the 90′s. Great producer, but just not the same. This guy is a complete legend and besides being one of the greatest producers of all time he’s also a composer… I dont think kanye is even close.
That being said, Kanye West is still a lot more than just a “rapper” though
Well said Q. Too many people confuse making a beat with being a producer. Just because you make tracks with Fruity Loops or purchased a drum machine does not make you a producer.
I agree with Quincy, yes Kanye is more than just a rapper, but what I think Quincy meant is I am a producer/composer of music that has done music in different genres from R&B to classical music. Kanye isn’t composing music, he is sampling but is great at know what sounds to sample and bringing them together but nowhere near the level of a quincy jones, shit Kanye still has to get his catalog up to possibly a Dr. Dre, then go past that and then we can talk about Quincy Jones
Kanye still has to learn how to rap! I loved My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (even though it ain’t no College Dropout), what he did with the different samples (they were quite a lot!!!), but let’s face it, Kanye West doesn’t know how to rap, he ain’t a rapper!
yea… ok “corina”
i thought he was one until he started messing with that autotune crap.. went downhill from there. new stuff is alright but its def nothing like what he used to make. kanye need to go hang with the old rocafella group
Disagree. Did yall even here “Dark Fantasy”? I Thought that song had a vibe of classic hip hop. and verses were on point. Ye is to me best rapper next to Eminem.
Personally, I think “808s…” is his best album, instrumentally especially.
I think Q would appreciate an album like “808s…” more than his others.
Q does have a great point, but it’s not exactly fair to disregard the music-making process/ability simply because it’s hip hop/from a rapper. Not all hip hop is based off of the MPCs & such.
“Kanye West doesn’t know how to rap, he ain’t a rapper!” Really?
REALLY? You must of drank too many of those Coronas Corina.
And Gorgeous & Blame Game. Bothe Lyrically on point
kanye isnt concious anymore. he just raps about name brands and porn stars and he doesnt seem to notice how much he has fallen and changed .I copped His new album,Yes its amazing, yes it has sick beats and rhythms and samples.. but those are all reasons we like swizz beatz not kanye west.. kanye west was the guy who could fuse the two; amazing sound and amazing lyrics. not ”mercy,mercy that murcialago”..more like ” keep your nose out of the sky,keep your heart to God and turn your face to the rising sun”… thats the kanye west we all fell in love with.Now he is just like any other rapper but is still an amazing producer.Half of him is gone.And you cant dispute this fact. Kanye is still sick and still ahead of his league , but the real articulate soul edifying lyrics of Mr.west are a thing of the past
this is the 100% truth. this is how all his real fans feel
So, he’s not conscious, yet he speaks about conscious stuff on the album as well as the superficial stuff. In the same song where that line was from in the 2nd verse he said, “hey, teacher, teacher, how do we respond to students….we stop the ignorance, n we kill the enemy.” Please listen to the album again, “real yeezy fans.”
“Come on, man. He’s just a rapper. There’s no comparison. I’m not putting him down…” really? cause it sounds like it. hey man thats great what ure doing but kanye west is the greatest producer of ALL TIME!
Damn, it’s damn hard to be a celebrity. Everybody criticizing you and only few people actually see your talent while everyone else is arguing how the person have changed and shit like that. Believe it or not Kanye will go down in history of hip hop as one of the greatest whether you like it or not.
Ok so i’ve read all the comments to gain a prospective of what everyone is thinking and now i can voice my opinion.
Before the technology was as advanced as it is today the only method of creating such artistry was to learn the craft and experience the sound and soul of every artist, to build a song that really complimented them and their style of voice.
This always required much studio time creating the music spending time with the artist on a personal level and building more than a i’ll send you my verse relationship and i’ll see you at the video shoot… (just think about the recording equipment of that day and age and instruments used and had to be learnt)
Today you can put an artist to a beat and 8 different artists can rhyme or sing over it and only one artist out of the 8 will stand out due to the identity of the song.
Kayne can produce the best out of artists, because like Timberland, Dr Dre and even P.Diddy, Puff Daddy, Puff or whatever you want to call him.. Yes Puffy has the ear and the innovation to produce some amazing pieces of work.
Kayne is more than just a rapper he’s a realist and in this he’s able to expand on his ideas and thought and yes the majority of these ideas are created from his childhood memories or experiences with music he’s grown up listening to such as Quincy Jones and other producers of his time which gave him the use of classic and well thought out music. (the sampling)
Academically in music yeah Quincy is right Kayne is just a pioneer of Hip-Hop because he in some cases is limited to just this genre of music and just about Rock. However appreciation in his ability to take what he has learned and reinvent his music in his emotions at the same time and carry that to other artists is what makes him a very identifiable producer.
When you hear music from him you can always feel the passion and more so in his own album work because he’s conveying his own image in his music and his feelings.
There’s no hate but the truth, people will get emotional over it but you have to see it from the outside looking in when you attempt to compare someone with such academic achievements as Quincy.
Kanye West is a talented artist and Quincy Jones is a phenomenal musician. The difference is, Quincy can go into a studio with just a regular piano, a singer, a flat mic, a pen and produce a classic. Kanye would need software and drum machines.
It’s like an authentic cooked meal vs McDonalds
not quite exactly @EXACTLY
Understand that it’s an interview where shit gets taken out of context but we all know that Quincy co-produced Off The Wall, Thriller & Bad. No one can beat that shit ever!
Your right Quincy has already said that quote was taken out of context.
The quote is still true. These days people tend to go along with the masses and be politically correct out of fear of the backlash that being labeled “hater” can cause….and as a result some NECESSARY truths often go untold or are dismissed as hate.
Oh God, please spare us that bullshit. There are ways to say something without being insulting it’s called tact and that quote as it is printed is stupid. Example Kanye running up on Taylor Swift was the wrong move even though the point he was making was right….same thing goes for this.
Kanye is really good at what he does in this generation of music and Quincy is great at what he did in his generation of music it doesn’t have to be one better then the other because what they do and the way they do it is completely different. Kanye doesn’t have to worry about being the next Quincy because he’s already the first Kanye.
You can sugar coat it and dress it up all you want but the truth is the truth and sometimes it needs to be delivered raw dog in order to really be heard.
Nah…Quincy’s correct.
I’m glad Quincy kept it 100 and let it be known that niggas are stupid if they think Kanye is anywhere near his level. This generation is so delusional and caught up in rushed bullshit that they have no clue and no desire to learn about the integrity of real music and what it actually takes to be a real producer, singer, songwriter, etc. When a producer doesn’t even play an instrument he can’t be compared to the likes of a Quincy Jones, doing so is disrespectful to Quincy.
Fact! Quincy is bitter that he was no where near Kanye’s level when he was Kanye age. Of course they cant be compared! Quincy had a 100yr head start!!!
Kanye is more than just a rapper. and if what he does is plain simple how come we dont have everyone releasing their own 808s and heartbreak!
Quincy should just have said “Kanye reminds me of me when i was his age…”
I am loosing respect old man!