The DOC says he and Erykah Badu ended their relationship after Dr. Dre enlisted the rapper to write on his album.
DOC recently appeared on podcast Willie D Live and detailed his peaceful split with Badu in the 2000s. The exes share a daughter, Puma Curry, 21.
Around the 1:30 mark of the video below, the "It's Funky Enough" artist said that he and Badu had been in a relationship for four years. In the interim, he'd relocated back to his hometown of Dallas after having a "huge blowout" with Dre.
"The way I felt the story hadn't ended for me yet, you know. I was still trying to figure out how I'm going to write a happy ending to this story," said the rapper, who was in a career-altering car accident in 1989.
Around the time that his child with Badu was about 4 years old, Dre contacted The DOC with a songwriting request for his album. Although DOC didn't specify the project's title, the superproducer's third album, Compton, wouldn't release until 2015.
"Erykah and I had been together for three, four years. She cleaned me up. No more drugs and alcohol. You know, I'm a father now," DOC continued. "I still had a desire to be to be something of somebody. And I hadn't figured out how to create art again yet. So, when Dre called, that feeling came back, and I wanted to go, and she didn't want me to go. She thought it was a bad decision. She thought 'What's going to be different?'"
Badu predicted that DOC would be "in the same hole" as before, and although DOC thought "differently," he admitted the neo-soul icon was "right."
"But she said, you know, if you going to go, then just go," he explained.
DOC doubted that his ex-partner felt "betrayed" because he "gave so much" to their family while they were together. Badu has an older child, Seven Sirius Benjamin, now 27, with André 3000, while she shares her youngest daughter, Mars, 16, with Jay Electronica.
"But I wanted to go, and she received that and let me go," DOC concluded. "Now, we both knew when I left that we weren't going to be able to come back to what it was. And we acknowledged that and just moved forward."
Like she with the other fathers of her children, Badu maintains a friendship with The DOC and was even his wife's doula.