R.I.P. Dilla

Those of you who read these musings with any regularity will remember my Stones Throw Records posting from slightly over a month ago, and perhaps my particular affinity for producers Jay Dee (aka J Dilla) and Madlib.

At the time I wrote about Stones' Throw, I had no idea that Dilla was virtually on his death bed. Nobody did. According to the preponderance of press on the subject, Jay hid the extent of his illness from virtually everyone. Even now, many major media outlets are attributing his death simply to Lupus, when in fact it seems that his protracted health failure was considerably more complicated. The Detroit Free Press (easily the best newspaper moniker in this country) published a truly spectacular retrospective on the beatmaster that left this writer with tears in his eyes and a heavy heart.

I've had this post in mind for two weeks now. Not to overdramatize my personal involvement, but it's incredibly difficult to attempt to sum up or honor the life of a personal musical hero. Contrary to what you may be thinking, that is not an overstatement. Jay Dee is not only one of my favorite beatmakers (probably #1 on my Top Ten list) but also a revolutionary producer for hip-hop, in general.

As a producer for a variety of mainstream hip-hop groups throughout the '90s (A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Pharcyde, etc.) Jay managed to push his raw, pounding brand of beats on the pop-hop crowd. Looking back, his tracks on Tribe's Beats, Rhymes and Life (one of the first hip-hop albums I purchased) are a big part of what changed me from casual observer of hip-hop to an interested fan.

Though Dilla has probably received more media coverage in death than he did over the course of his life (a sad testament to the state of hip-hop music today) perhaps more impressive is the response from the underground community. Looking for some underground hip-hop sites? Go ahead and type 'RIP Dilla' into your favorite search engine. After you browse through fifty pages of search results filled with various messages of love and tribute, you'll start coming to foreign-language hip-hop pages offering Jay Dee memorial pieces to the worldwide underground.

The web is also exploding with commemorative pieces of multimedia, from the brief Much Music tribute video to a slew of Dilla-based beat mixes like these two from hiphopmusic.com's DJ Emskee. Not to mention the overwhelming number of brief, heartfelt thank you's from artists he worked with (like this one from the myspace blog of Stones Throw MC Oh No, younger brother of Madlib.)

I'd like to think that the measure of an artist (especially a producer who works with so many different artists) is the response from his peers, and if this is the case, Jay is one of the greatest of all time. Not only was he a pioneer for what I take to be the truest and best brand of hip-hop (his hard-hitting break beats are always paired with soulful, well-thought-out samples), but he seems to have left a profound mark on every artist he ever worked with, and most every eardrum he pounded.

Listening to Donuts (the Dilla album released on his 32nd birthday, three days before he died) is a bittersweet experience. It's a 31-track album that runs a mere 44 minutes, with the longest track (Don't Cry) weighing in at 1:59. Much of the LP was pieced together from a hospital bed, and it truly sounds as though Jay - aware of his impending passing - was trying to record as many beats as possible. It's as though he had a cache of hot tracks in his brain, just waiting to be conjured into existence, and he used his last few months to quickly document the contents of the mind of a hip-hop genius.

As I write this, I'm jamming to J. Rocc's "Thank you Jay Dee" podcast, a very well-done hour-long tribute compiled largely from Dilla's own production work. In the coming months, we'll see several posthumous releases (solo and collaborative) and the next few years will probably feature countless remixes and mashups built on top of Jay's foundations. Other great producers will come along. But nobody - not Madlib, not Kanye, not your favorite producer today and not tomorrow's star beatmaker - will fill the void left by the departure of a true, revolutionary hip-hop genius.

for more general info on Jay Dee aka J Dilla check out this solid wikipedia entry about him, or his artist page at myspace. Here's his complete discography.

Rest In Peace, and enjoy the Big Record Store in the Sky...