DJ Quik: "Pet Sematary"
The beauty of DJ Quik’s “Pet Sematary” is how it makes gangsta rap feel somehow friendly. The latest single from Quik’s forthcoming album, The Midnight Life, combines laid-back enunciation and keys-heavy funk fusion to create the same breeze that once endeared people to West Coast contemporaries like Easy-E and the Pharcyde. The song’s infectious groove harkens to an era when hip-hop production was driven by melody rather than beat.
“Pet Sematary” compels from the get-go: a spoken word intro complaining about people who say “R&B music and gangsta rap is dead” leaves us no choice but to take these fools to the “pet sematary.” This is rhetoric we’ve heard before—who the hell is arguing about “gangsta rap” in 2014?—but one that Quik is uniquely qualified to discuss. Notice, he didn’t say pet cemetery. Pet Sematary is the name of a 1989 horror film adaptation of a Stephen King novel.
Between the titular coincidence and other goofy references to South Central L.A. and the iPhone age—”I’m back on the scene with no cracks on my screen”—it’s clear that Quik is up for more jokes than “gangsta rap” would first suggest. “Y’all killing the game like pesticides,” he intones, “but DJ Quik is unpasteurized.” The lyricism here is without question, but the production really shines: “Pet Sematary” is warm and amicable despite lyrics that threaten takeover. DJ Quik has been at it since the 80s, but that doesn’t mean he can’t raise the bar.
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