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Bud'da Talks 'Detox,' Dr. Dre's Death Row Split And Recording ...

EXCLUSIVE: The “Been There Done That” and “Bow Down” beatmaker reveals his current relationship with Dr. Dre, and why Dre didn’t want to fight Death Row.

In the first half of Bud’da’s revealing conversation with HipHopDX, the producer from Pittsburgh who, thanks to fellow ‘Burgh native Sam Sneed, helped define the west coast Gangsta Rap sound of the ‘90’s discussed his history of crafting classics for Ice Cube and Dr. Dre two-thousand miles from his hometown.

Now in the second half of his discussion with DX, the man most responsible for the Westside Connection’s classic debut, who then became arguably the architect of Aftermath Entertainment’s early sound, revealed why he and fellow Pittsburghians Mel-Man and Stu-B-Doo made the “transition” to Aftermath but Dr. Dre’s good friend Sam did not. Bud’da additionally explained why his own stint working for the good doctor didn’t last past creatively flipping “California Love” to help King T “Shake Da Spot” for T’s shelved Aftermath album, (but why Dre is still selecting Bud’da beats years later). The longtime Los Angeles transplant also discussed his impressive post-Aftermath work for Mr. X-to-the-Z and lessened, but no less powerful, productions for Ice Cube in the years since his history making contributions to Bow Down.

Remarkably pleasant and polite for someone with over 15 years logged in the at times dark and depraved business of music, the music composer (with over a dozen film and television scores to his credit) and CEO of Bout Time Entertainment (where he is overseeing the development of singer Eddie Gomez) concludes the must-read story of how one of the greatest producers you might not know about went from Dr. Dre to Disney.

HipHopDX: So on that first Aftermath compilation, [Dr. Dre Presents … The Aftermath], you were down, so was Stu-B-Doo, and Mel-Man was in the mix, but where was Sam? When I spoke to Sam, he said Dre basically ignored his inquiries about what Dre was gonna do post-Death Row [Records] and so Sam went back to Pittsburgh.

Bud’da: That was a grey area during that time. We was all out here trying to make it happen when the Death Row thing happened. It got really weird all the way around the board in regards to threats and all type of other stuff. So, Dre was playin’ it on the low…And when he decided to do what he did, the reasoning I got behind it was that Sam was still in his Death Row contract. And for the most part – I’m only assuming – Dre didn’t want to – being that he was leaving that situation – I guess he didn’t wanna put himself even more on the line to try to fight for Sam, even though they had been through a whole bunch. … So that was my [understanding] on why Sam didn’t transition [to Aftermath]. To my knowledge, they was good friends before [me, Mel and Stu] even all came out [to Los Angeles].

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