Laylaw Discusses His History With Dr. Dre, 2Pac, Ghost-Producing "California Love (Remix)"

-The veteran west coast consigliore tells DX
about Dr. Dre's early days,
his upcoming box set audio-biography
and says "Fuck Jerry Heller."

-“I been knowing Dre since like ’80, ’81,” recalled Laylaw recently to HipHopDX of the two future producer’s initial South Central connection. “I stayed down the street from his cousin, on 76th Street, right across the street from Fremont [High School]. I played football for Fremont… and [Dre] would dance at halftime with some other brothers, some pop-locker dudes.

-Fast forward a few years to the mid-‘80s and the Fremont alums had cut their first record together: the Dracula-inspired “Monster Rapping.”

-Laylaw’s short-lived career as an artist continued the following year with “What’s Your Name,” and Electro-driven dance cut produced by “The Mechanic,” which was an alias Dr. Dre adopted at the time to avoid any conflict with his deal with Epic Records, as part of The World Class Wreckin’ Cru, while working with ‘Law.


-“It was both of ‘em,” replied Laylaw. “I don’t kiss nobody ass, man. I mean, Eazy was cool as fuck. I loved Eazy. I miss Eazy. But then when Eazy got schooled by Jerry [Heller] … All of the sudden I gotta talk to Jerry about shit I’ve never talked to Jerry about? Fuck Jerry, man. I’m not talking to Jerry about nothing. You couldn’t get me to respect Jerry. That was the problem. [I was like], ‘How you gonna just throw this muthafucka in the mix, Eazy? You used to buy dope from me muthafucka. I used to give you dope on consignment. Now you got me talking to this white fool about this bullshit?’”


-“So I’m like, ‘Alright, what’chu gonna do with my version? ‘Cause we have two versions of the song,’” he continued. “[Dre] said, ‘Your version’s the remix.’ I did it with my partner at the time, [D’Maq]. … [Dr. Dre] told me that he sent the credits into Suge [Knight] and Suge fucked it up. I called Suge. Suge said, ‘Dre never gave me the credits, ‘Law.’ … Mind you, Suge ain’t really worrying about putting my name on shit. So I get in touch with Tupac, and ‘Pac telling me he trying to leave [Death Row Records], he just wanna finish these extra albums and he wanna leave. So, we just kicked back and just let [the situation] marinate.”



Read the whole thing over at HipHopDX