Top Dawg Entertainment’s resident mixer and engineer, MixedByAli, sat down with Merry Jane (Snoop Dogg’s new weed-centric website) to discuss the lessons he’s learned from Dr. Dre and, of course, weed.
Ali first met Dr. Dre before while good kid, m.a.a.d. city was being mixed. The first song they mixed together was “Swimming Pools.”
“I walked in, I didn’t know what to expect. I’m a kid walking into this grown man’s session. I’m sitting here I’m like, ‘yo, this is Dr. Dre,'” he said, but then they got down to business. “[Dre] said, ‘It’s not what you’re working on—It’s who’s pressing the button.'” Dre would give him grades — “A-plus, A, thumbs up, thumbs down” — on his mixing, pretty much like a school teacher would.
The rest of the interview features short snippets of answers to weed-related questions like what’s the best album to smoke weed to (The Beatles’ Abbey Road) and the most important lesson when smoking for the first time (“Know your limits when you smoking good gas”).
Watch the interview below.
SHAKE EDIT: Although Dre helped him reach new heights, MixedByAli has always been a wizard with the boards. For proof, just press play on this epic TDE throwback mix—which covers 10 years and 30 albums from Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, and the rest.
