Stat Quo says he doesn't know exactly when, but Dr. Dre is definitely going to drop Detox. It's not a myth. Stat has been writing on the project for several months.
"It's definitely gonna come out," the Atlanta native said of Dre's long-awaited project. "I always said it was gonna come out in 2010 light years ago. I also at one point thought it would never come out. Being around Dre and the energy that's being created, all I can say is that it's incredible. It's totally left-field from what's going on — I really appreciate what he's doing as an artist. Even though from the outside looking in, if I'm other people, I'll be like, 'What's taking him so long?' But it's gonna be worth every second, every hour, every minute. Every week, every year we waited for the album.
"The songs I've heard since I've been around are all really special," he continued. "It's so important to hip-hop that this record comes. It's our saving grace. A lot of the radio stations are going rhythmic and going away from certain types of urban music. You can only go to contemporary stations to get certain soul-type music. The whole platform is changing. An album like his can bring a boost to the music that's going on."
Well, at least we know that Dre is busy. Stat appears in Dr. Dre's new Hewlett-Packard commercial — in the short, Dre is at the boards producing while Stat is in the vocal booth. Quo's fans have been waiting for him to put out his debut almost as long as Dr. Dre's followers have been anticipating Detox. Stat signed to Shady/Aftermath around the same time as 50 Cent, watching while 50 Cent put out an album and waited while G-Unit commandos Tony Yayo, Young Buck, Lloyd Banks and Young Buck dropped. When he was finally on deck in 2007, plans for his LP were squelched once again.
"When it was time to put a record out, the powers that be [at Interscope] that keeps the lights on at the company was like, 'We need either a 50 Cent or a Dr. Dre or an Eminem record," Stat said. "So I had to make the decision: 'OK, it's time to leave.' We parted on good terms. Initially when I first left, I was upset because I wanted to put my album out under that umbrella. At the end of the day, my relationships with Dre and Em is still intact and it's all good."
Last year, Stat inked a deal with former G-Unit executive and producer Sha Money XL's Dream Big Ventures imprint. His album Statlanta is due in May. The first single is "Success" and on the ditty, Stat raps from the perspective of success being his girl.
"For me, it's a situation of, you start a journey," he explained. "This album is my odyssey. It's like I'm finally completing it and putting it out. People are like, 'You been working on this album for seven years.' I've made this album, like, four or five times. When I first signed to Shady/Aftermath, it had one particular vibe then I worked with Em, and the vibe changed. Then I worked with Dre and the vibe changed again. Then when I left Shady/Aftermath I made another album thinking I was gonna go to another major, the vibe was different at that point. When I hooked up with Sha and the Dream Big thing, the vibed changed again. This is the vibe you getting now. So Statlanta has been made seven, eight times. I got a bunch of old Statlantas, but I have to make the music more relevant to what I have going on at this particular time. Times changed."
Stat says his LP will depict what's going on in is life right now. "This album — I had to look at the game and what's going on in music," he offered. "It's a lot of people complaining. I think too many artists are trying to fit into boxes and lanes that don't fit their personalities. If you're a 31-year-old male or female, you shouldn't be rapping about what a 16-year-old male or female is going through — unless you're trying to enlighten them on a perspective of 'I've been where you've been.' But 'I'mma drop my booty low and make music they're excited about,' that's not really your life. You look like the old dude in the club. That's just not hot. This [album], I wrote it from a standpoint of what I was going through in my life and the struggles that not only I've been through, but the people around me have been going through."
