For over 20 years Quincy Jones III, aka QD3 has helped redefine urban entertainment. A breakdancer and producer during the pioneering days of hip-hop, QD3 went on to produce for the legendary likes of Tupac, Ice Cube and Prince, has scored television and film titles like "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" and Menace II Society and masterminded the groundbreaking QD3 film collection that birthed documentary DVD classics Thug Angel and the BEEF series among others. This week 24 Hour Grind tapped QD3 to talk about filmmaking, scoring and being a part of hip-hop history.

QD3 B-Boyin' in Boston Combat Zone '87

Sometimes the Best Marketing is Done By Making the Best Product
I grew up in a socialist country Sweden, we didn’t have a lot of branding, there are no ads on TV at all so I think that shaped me differently than other people. The way we tried to build a brand was to just make it as good as possible and give the fans what they wanted. We spent all the money into making as good a film as possible. We built the brand by delivering what consumers wanted versus telling them it was hot. Most of our sales came from word of mouth, our marketing budgets were super low. We ended up shipping double or triple platinum because we did really good quality. We do what we love and it’s been more of a pull model than a push model. We haven’t done a lot of overt marketing we just put the titles out. It seems like we’re passing that phase, with the internet people want to have to look for what they’re trying to find.

Same thing with music. There were a lot of artists I could have worked with, but I figured let me just do what I love and I look back and almost every record I worked on did really well. It’s not about quantity sometimes, or having a rapid rise. Sometimes you take a slower burn and have a longer career. I would opt for the second over the first. It keeps you focused on what you do.

QD3 pictured with old school pioneers

Greatest Moments In QD3 History:
Creating the QD3 collection was great. Having lived in the Bronx in the early 80’s I was working with the first artist signed to Def Jam, T La Rock and his brother was Special K from the Treacherous Three, Kool Moe Dee’s group. So being able to document it the way it went down and talk to the right people and give back in that way was amazing. Seeing it go from the feeling you had at 14 to the vision you put down in the mid 90’s to see some of the titles go multi-platinum has been a blessing. Media has so much power and being able to play a small part in feeding people’s minds in some way has been the best part of it.

For more on QD3 Entertainment and the QD3 collection visit www.qd3.com