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 pictured with The Game (peep The Game's "BEEF" tattoo)

Find An Underlying Mission For Your Documentary
Definitely find an underlying mission because there is enough mindless entertainment out there that can influence people the wrong way. With Beef, the idea grew out of knowing Tupac. When he passed away I wanted to show people the real impact these situations have so that moving forward we would humanize it and not root for people to kill each other. Our underlying mission was to humanize these beefs and have people walk away with a different understanding.

When we were working on Thug Angel, the Tupac documentary we did, having known him, I knew he was a well read, well rounded extremely intelligent human being with emotional sensitivity, intellectual sensitivity, cultural sensitivity, he understood politics. The images we saw of him in videos made him out to be a thug with his t-shirt off and tattoos but he was so much more than that. So our underlying mission there was to broaden people’s horizons on how full his persona was. Him as a human being was more incredible than his music.

Focus on quality is the second thing. There is so much content out there that is instant gratification and gossip that there is so much room for quality, you will stand out by default.

Also do what you know and love, if you know something really well and you are in a position to speak on it more than anyone else in the world, that’s the topics you should pick because it comes across in your work.

Greatest Moments in QD3 History:
Recording with Tupac and being up at Death Row at a time when Dre was there, DJ Quik was there Daz and Kurupt, Lady of Rage, Nate Dogg, Hammer, everyone you can imagine was in those two studios. Being around that energy and having so many legends available to record on your songs was amazing. Recording "To Live and Die" in LA when we finished Makavelli was amazing. Tupac was the kind of person who would say what he felt. He would record 5 or 6 songs a day and when I walked away from that era I never worked the same again. Before that I’d take 6 days to do one song. It was the closest thing to being in a supernatural situation for me because things moved so fast it was unbelievable. It was watching history in the making and you knew it while it was happening.