Album Of The Week: DJ Quik The Midnight Life

"That Getter," the first single from DJ Quik's new album The Midnight Life, had one guest, and that guest's name was David Blake. David Blake is Quik's birth name, so I assumed this was Quik himself, rapping with a slightly different flow and doing a "T.I. Vs. T.I.P." thing, expanding his persona some slight bit. As it turns out, David Blake is actually Quik's son, who can really rap and who shows up four different times on The Midnight Life. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. There is, after all, precedent for rap legends to throw guest verses to their rapping sons. E-40 and Ghostface Killah both got there before Quik. But nobody would've ever confused Droop-E or Sun God with their fathers. Quik, on the other hand, still raps in a sprightly, conversational flow, the same one he used on his classic debut Quik Is The Name 23 years ago. And if anything, he's grown even more adventurous as a producer, finding ever-weirder things to do with his silky live-band funk. Both in terms of voice and vision, Quik still sounds young. Like his son. The Midnight Life is Quik's ninth album, and he's long, long past the point where most rappers fade into obsolescence. But with The Midnight Life, he's made an album as curious and adventurous and slick and strange as anything he's ever done. He's a national treasure, one of rap's most enduring visionaries, and he's still got a young man's sense of adventure. We're lucky to still have him around, finding funky things to do with banjos.