Legendary producer Quincy Jones comes from an era where musicianship and credibility favored swag and online marketability. So even though he’s no longer active on the music front, he still has an all-seeing eye across the game and he’s calling out struggle as he sees fit.
Jones recently opened up in a “candid talk” with The National and he had some pretty unflattering things to say about two artists are who on top of their respective games in Lil Wayne and Skrillex.
The publication gave Jones a softball question looking for a homerun hit worth of slander and the 81-year-old mogul easily took the bait. When asked how today’s current hitmakers stacked up to the ones of music’s former glory years, he immediately targeted Weezy: “Let’s get real, man. When you come from the era of Ray Charles, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson, it gets hard to get used to Lil Wayne. I just can’t handle it.”
He also threw shade on techno music saying, “That’s just noise. I can try it because there is nothing to it but I just don’t think there is anything to learn from it. Now all these DJs are making more money than rock groups. They don’t even need bands anymore. People such as Skrillex and those guys get half a million to a million dollars a show all over the world from Las Vegas to Brazil. As a musician it is extremely frustrating. Because that’s just music to sell products.”
When you’re 81-years-old, your filter for political correctness begins to thin just like your hair.
Let us know in the comment section below if you feel like Mr. Jones has a point or if he’s just too old to relate to today’s musical climate.
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Photo: Brian To/WENN
