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.

Eazy E, Schooly D, DJ Lethal and QD3 during the NWA days (Video Shoot) 89 or 90

Focus on New Media & The Internet
Going back to the point of overt marketing, I think more and more the most successful brands are those that connect organically. Use the internet as much as you can to connect and also to get feedback from your audience and take heed to it. Today’s marketplace is a collaborative effort, it’s like a dialogue, if you look at the brands online they take a lot of feedback from their users. That dialogue is really important today, in terms of expanding your brand that’s the quickest way and it’s damn near free. That’s where the world seems to be going. To be honest with you, this whole media side of QD3, when I was producing records back in '94 this lawyer introduced me to the internet. He said 'Anything you want to do, do it online because that’s where the future is.' I went home and got a modem and quickly realized there was a whole streaming video component. When I was watching music channels there was no hip hop on television that was real. In the mid-nineties I got the idea to do a channel that was direct to consumers online back then, so I started collecting footage, talked to Paul Allen and a whole bunch of other investors and then when the bubble burst that’s when we were like 'Damn what are we going to do.' My lawyer suggested we try DVD to execute our vision and show people what we wanted to do and when broadband came back around, go back online. So that’s exactly what happened. Qd3.com was conceived back in the 90’s. We never intended to make long form films. My number one passion in life above music and film is technology. I’m like the athlete that wants to be a rapper. I want to be a techie straight up, like a Steve Jobs or Niklas Zennström (the guy that invented Skype).

Ice Cube & QD3 working on Menace II Society/Yoyo circa 1992

Greatest Moments in QD3 History:

Working with Ice Cube was a big thing for me at the time he was recording his music in the early 90’s. I had met him working under Dre, I was producing this female artist they had on Ruthless Records. Just being around that time, I was able to soak up the nucleus of what later became gangsta rap. Working with Cube at that time, the songs he was creating, he was an activist. Even before the riots he did that song "Black Korea" and then a year and a half later it happened. The news came to him like 'How did you know?' That was a time when hip hop was powerful and it meant something. It made me feel like I was making music for Nat Turner. Half the time we’d make music in the studio and the other half of the time Cube would sit there and play Farrakkhan videos and political videos and school us on what was going on in the world. In turn that made me read books and encouraged me to do what I am doing now. Cube was a huge influence and I don’t know if people really realize how dope he is as a thinker.

If you look at the lyrics he wrote to “Fuck the Police” and analyze them and write them on paper -- Brilliant! And he wrote that when he was like 16 or 19. He is a genius that is somewhat unrecognized because he became more commercial later, but in those days Cube was every bit as potent as Tupac. The feeling you got rolling with them, they were’t thinking 'Man what’s hot on the streets?' they were like ‘Let’s rap about what we see.’ Cube would always add some cautionary tale at the end of everything. He’d tell the story so well rounded. That was an honor to get down with that. That’s probably one of the reasons I went from music to dvd’s, because I started seeing people be so much more calculated about what they were trying to do [in music] and have an image to portray. Back in those days they were just like, let’s make a dope record and if it takes a year and a half that’s what it takes.

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