London based producer Quincey Tones has had a pretty eventful year. His remix of Jay-Z’s "I Know," which was originally stamped with the Pharrell seal, has been dubbed better than the original. His creativity was approved with God's Gangster, a mixtape that featured the vocal of, again, Jay-Z and the lyrically ornate Nasir Jones. Each project a great introduction to both Hip-Hop fans and the industry, with a DIY approach that helped 9th Wonder transition from North Carolina producer to superstar five years ago.

With a unique and intricate approach to sampling as the back bone of his production technique, displayed on the underground cult album from EMC, Quincey Tones was a musician before a producer. Adamant that he is not here just for the interim, Quincey is deftly establishing himself as one of the UK’s hottest exports.

With his recent battle with cancer pushing him harder than he has ever been pushed before Quincey assures us that his best is yet to come. And working on his own conceptual album, he is ready to show the world just what that best is. Humble, hardworking and highly-skilled, Quincey Tones might just be the UK's hottest Hip Hop commodity.

HipHopDX: How did you get your start in music?
Quincey Tones: I played bass guitar in a lot of bands as a kid and I played in Reggae bands and supported some legendary artists. But in Hip Hop, it wasn’t until I started out playing in a band with a deejay and an emcee, that got me [involved] and it was from there I pushed on and decided to become a producer. I learned from those guys as they were already on the scene themselves. Being a musician has been helpful when it comes to the production aspect, as you know where to place stuff and you can tell when you hear certain things that a person might not have a good ear for music [can't], and it is a great start for any producer to be able to play live instruments.

DX: You were playing in bands from primary/grade school?
Quincey Tones: Yeah I wasn’t taking music seriously until I was about 11 or 12 and then I was playing in all types of bands until about seven years ago, when I started seeing myself as a producer.

DX: Some so-called fans of music don’t seem to understand the difference between a beat and a track that uses live instrumentation. Being that you are a musician, does it annoy you that people don’t recognize what has gone into a track?
Quincey Tones: Not really, as unless you are really involved in the track, you are not really going to understand what has gone into the track. There is a great art to sampling and I do that a lot, whether people think it is sampling or live instrumentation doesn’t bother me. I have been adding a lot of live instrumentation myself to stuff. I do think most people can tell when it is a sample and when it is chopped up and when it is live instrumentation and obviously, nowadays, it is a lot harder for big artists to use samples so they turn to live instrumentations.

DX: The track "Ma Money" [click to listen] you did with Dap C which featured Lil Wayne, Talib and Royce and also the one you did for UK artist Low-key were very soundtrack/movie score driven, was that the intention and is this something you see yourself doing in the future, movie scoring?
Quincey Tones: For the Low-key track, with the subject matter, I needed something that had to be real emotional.

DX: Oh so you knew what he wanted?
Quincey Tones: Yeah we had already talked about what the concept was, and what it was about so it was my job to make the beat for it. And with the music alone you had to be able to make people cry for that track. I am not sure if the Dap C [song] was specifically a soundtrack sample, but I know what you mean. With the Dap C track, it just had to be an epic joint. I mean down the line, I would like to get into all kinds of different things; but I think obviously I need to make my stamp first as a Hip Hop producer first and foremost. I certainly plan dabble in producing other forms of music with big instrumentation, but to do that I feel I would need to make a name for myself first.

DX: Funny you say that though as your version of Jay-Z’s "I Know" is considered, by some, better than Pharrell’s, which is a pretty solid stamp.
Quincey Tones: Hopefully a few big people got to hear that, including Jay-Z [click to read] himself. With that track, I just did it and put it over the video and hoped for the best and hoped with the Internet how it is, it would get round and have people start talking and thankfully they did. I did get a lot of people hitting me up looking for beats after that and also the Nas project I did God’s Gangster. With that all I wanted to do was see how the dopest emcees would sound over my beats. It was a good idea.

DX: Do you feel that was a solid introduction to the US market?
Quincey Tones: Yes I mean I had already been fairly well known on the underground in New York mainly, having worked with Masta Ace and Wordsworth [as EMC] [click to read], my name had got around a little but that was more amongst the rappers. Hopefully the God's Gangster and the Jay-Z remixes got my names out to fans as well. Continued on page 2 »