J Dilla's Donuts (33 1/3) by Ferguson Jordan

Author:Ferguson, Jordan [Ferguson, Jordan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781623567194
Publisher: BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
Published: 2014-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

Workinonit

From the outside looking in, it might have seemed as though Dilla’s musical output had slowed down much more considerably than it had. Aside from a pair of tracks he contributed to Be, Common’s quote–unquote comeback album in 2005, what little material released publicly was with independent or underground acts like Talib Kweli or other Stones Throw artists like MED and Madlib’s brother Oh No. But he continued working on beats whenever his health would permit. He’d worked out a deal to do another album for BBE, and spent most of his time working on the project, a true follow-up to Welcome 2 Detroit where he would produce all of the music and share rhyming duties with collaborators. And he still “practiced,” filling CDs with beats, working his way through yet another shift in style.

While the music he was making during the L.A. years continued to feature the dusty drums and lower fidelity first found on Ruff Draft, he replaced the synths and electronic sounds with acoustic instruments and soulful vocal samples. Soul samples had seen a revival since Kanye West and Just Blaze used them throughout Jay-Z’s album The Blueprint in 2001, but Dilla came at them from an entirely different angle.

An early indication of where he was at musically can be found on “Dollar,” by British electronic artist Steve Spacek. Built around a 12-second sample of “Let the Dollar Circulate” by Philadelphia soul singer Billy Paul, Dilla snags a moment of Paul’s vibrato delivery of the word “circulate,” and stretches it through the length of an entire verse, turning his voice into an hypnotic, indecipherable drone. Unlike the way in which they were used by his contemporaries, Dilla’s use of soul vocals accented the melodies of the composition, he never looped them: Instead, he stripped them down into their most basic elements, slicing, stretching, and bending them into bizarre and compelling new forms.

“It was a more mature version of that Kanye West school of production, with the chipmunk voices and using vocals as part of the melody,” said Rich Medina, a DJ and member of New York’s legendary Rocksteady Crew. “Like, ‘Nah B, hold on. Y’all niggas some Toyotas. Here’s the Mercedes.’ Even if he didn’t mean it that way, that’s what it sounded like to me.”1

The shift in sound during his time in L.A. may have had practical reasons as well: “He only came to L.A. with the [MPC] and that was basically it. And then whatever Otis would buy him and whatever else he would buy at Guitar Center,” said J. Rocc.2 Having left a sophisticated studio setup back in Detroit, if Dilla was going to keep making music, he’d have to do it on what he could take with him. And since the days of Camp Amp and Davis Aerospace, hardware limitations were just problems to be solved, so it wasn’t long before new beat batches started circulating through the city.

“He was always giving us beat tapes and he was making kind of jokey names

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