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noizemagazine - Index

noizemagazine - noiZe Magazine Issue 60 May 2009 - Index

Quentin was offered the position of touring
DJ with The Masterminds, a local
group for whom he had produced a
number of tracks. After touring for a
while, he moved permanently: “I literally
took two suitcases—one full of records,
one full of clothes—and got on a plane
with a one-way ticket to New York.”
because I had never heard records
played like that before,” he recalls.
“He took records and made them
sing. He took records that I heard
a lot and presented them in a new
light to me—manipulating them,
mixing them in a certain way, bringing
them in and out, playing with
people’s heads with music.” The
second New York DJ that really
opened up Harris was Timmy
Regisford of Shelter fame: “He was
just relentless. I never heard any
spaces; I never heard any pauses; I
never heard any breaks.”
He started by working at Satellite
Records, where he met many of the
movers and shakers in the New York
music scene. Among them was a manager,
Marvin Howell, who assessed
Quentin’s talent by giving him a CD full
of a cappellas, which included the track
“Ready for Love” by an artist named
India.Arie. The remix that Quentin did
of the song ended up in the hands of
Timmy Regisford, who liked it so much
that he asked to have a meeting with
him. “That was the door opening,” says
Quentin.
Back in Detroit, Harris started
working with Michael J. Powell,
who produced Anita Baker’s three
Grammy award-winning albums.
He freelanced at Powell’s studio
as a session musician for such artists
as Aretha Franklin and Patti
LaBelle. Harris got even more heavily
involved with hip-hop, playing
at open mic nights at The Hip-Hop
Shop on 7 Mile in Detroit, where he
met many of the emerging heavy
hitters of the hip-hop scene, including
Eminem and many of the other
characters made famous by the film
8 Mile.
“The music scene in Detroit is very
small, and I’ve had the pleasure of
learning from and working with a lot
of great people,” Quentin states.
“But I always knew that, in order
for me to actually do what I had
to do, I couldn’t do it and still live
in Detroit. I guess this may be my
competitive nature, but I needed to
be where everything was.”
Quentin considers his big break, however,
to be the remix he did of Donnie’s
“Cloud 9.” He gave the record to
Regisford who liked the record so much
that he played it twelve times in one
night. “That was the record that started
the whirlwind,” says Harris. “There
was such demand for it. Everybody was
clamoring for it, everyone wanted it, and
no one could get it. It was crazy.”
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