MC Eiht Explains Why His Beef With DJ Quik Was Unlike Any In Rap & Why It Ended (Video)

Last year, MC Eiht detailed ending his beef with Compton, California rival DJ Quik for Vlad TV. Following the high profile 1990s killings of Rap peers Tupac Shakur (who Quik worked closely with) and The Notorious B.I.G., the two men met at BET, where after years, they squashed a violent beef.

In his latest interview with Unique Access, Eiht spoke candidly about that very same beef on wax.

MC Eiht Reveals How He & DJ Quik Ended One Of Hip-Hop’s Ugliest Beefs (Video)

According to some, the beef between the two Compton, California rappers began on Quik’s The Red Tape, an underground mixtape prior to his Profile Records success. By 1990, when Eiht’s group Compton’s Most Wanted released their debut, It’s A Compton Thang, Eiht, DJ Slip, and C.M.W. company responded with “Duck Sick.” According to Eiht, that song, inspired by EPMD’s “Jane” series, would become a series, as would “Def Wish.” Both C.M.W. series took aim at Quik and his affiliates, with the latter of the two song franchises stemming into 1996’s Death Threatz solo by Eiht. Compton’s Most Wanted, MC Eiht, and Epic Records would use some of these disses as music videos, sending the feud into the mainstream Rap culture.

As Eiht tells it, this battle was very different than Jay Z or Nas’ early 2000s feud, or even Tupac and Biggie. Asked what he learned from the beef in retrospect (6:30), Eiht states, “I think I’ve learned that some times beef is good in Hip-Hop… it sells records. Like boxing matches, dudes get in each others face and talk about [how] they gon’ kick each others ass. Whatever. The difference between [that and my beef with DJ Quik was] we came from a spot where dudes took gangbangin’ seriously. So for me to be sayin’ I was Crip, and him to be sayin’ he was a Blood, even though we were using our music as our outlets, it was still people around us who took it seriously to where it’s not about records. It’s about neighborhood beef, ‘Fuck them,’ ‘Fuck them.’ So I think that over the course of the years with it happening and seeing what has happened with beef, it’s taught me basically just how to be grown with people.” Outside of his issues with Quik, MC Eiht has dissed other artists including Cam’ron and The Diplomats as well as Tim Dog over the years.

1 Of DJ Quik’s 80s Underground Tapes Surfaces & It Bangs On Wax (Audio)

“It’s taught me to be grown because basically I got kids, and I got a son now that I wouldn’t want [to live in that world]. I tell my son, ‘You should be able to go anywhere you want to [without] having the anxiety to have to look over your shoulder ’cause somebody might dislike you.’ I didn’t come into Rap music to have mothafuckas not like me because of my past of street beef. Back then, I was a young cat; I tried to respect the neighborhood more than my music. My beefin’ was more about respect in my neighborhood, with Quik. It wasn’t even about his diss records or my diss records. It was about what the niggas in the neighborhoods was gonna expect from me ’cause I was from there. So that’s why I continued it. With the killings and people getting shot, and all that just made me go, ‘I’m beefin’ with a nigga that I really don’t know’ outside of [the fact] that he was a Blood, and I was a Crip. I rapped my rap, he rapped his, and we [mutually] got dudes that don’t like it.” Around 1999, the pair squashed differences, after each had earned plaques, fame, and found major label success well beyond Hub City. “We might as well try to work that out and solve that situation before somebody be at another funeral over somebody else’s beef. ‘Cause it ain’t even really gon’ be me or [DJ Quik], it’s gonna be one of those. And who wants to get blamed for that?”

In March of 1995, Kelly Jamerson was killed at Los Angeles, California’s El Rey Theater. The Death Row Records private event took place following The 1995 Soul Train Music Awards. The 28 year-old man was reportedly breaking up an argument where he was stomped, and later died during hospitalization. Several reports have connected the incident with Jamerson, who was said be associated with the Rolling 60 Crips by PBS, to the growing feud between Quik and Eiht at that time. Quik would later address that incident on 1998 single, “You’z A Ganxsta,” blaming Eiht in the lyrics.

DJ Quik Discusses His Extensive History, Details Origins Of MC Eiht Beef (Audio)

Last year, Quik confirmed that he and MC Eiht will be collaborating, nearly 30 years after “Duck Sick.” MC Eiht is presently finishing up Which Way Iz West. That LP is to be executive produced by DJ Premier, and released through Preemo’s Year Round Records.