DJ Quik: Balance & Options : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

We need something just a little bit different," says DJ Quik at the beginning of his fifth album. It's not an admission you expect from a West Coast gangsta-rap veteran. Yet there's DJ Quik, a one-time Compton Piru Blood, adding disarming wit to his relaxed-as-a-perm colloquial lyricism ("Do Whutcha Want"); reveling in warm, bounce-heavy vibes instead of the mechanical syncopation of his peers (the house-tempo "Sexuality"); and shunning the minimal sampling of his early albums in favor of soulfully swollen keyboard riffs and rolling bass lines (which Quik plays himself). There's still a dose of deference to the old school in Quik's funk -- nods to Eazy-E, the Boogie Boys and Roger Troutman -- but Balance and Options could be the most unexpectedly progressive hip-hop album of the year. (RS 842)

JOSEPH PATEL