Dilla Disects Drums in Donuts

Producer, rapper, and architect of amazing beats and hooks, artist Jay Dee laid the blueprints down for so many artists to sing over. Aside from a few scattered beats for Common and Medaphor, there hasn’t been a lot of new material put out by the same man who handcrafted numerous sounds for A Tribe Called Quest, Slum Village, D'Angelo, and from the man Pharrell, Kanye West, and Questlove have all hailed as the greatest producer.

The Detroit born Jay Dee, or J Dilla, created his last album, Donuts, shortly before his 32^nd birthday. J had been suffering from major health problems (he died on February 10, three days after his thirty-second birthday). In fact, Jay Dee made much of this record during an extended stay at the hospital, using original 45s, a Numark portable turntable and a Powerbook. The result is a forty-two-minute peek into J.Dilla's beat-tape sketchbook, as well as a lesson learned: Never mistake silence for laziness.

Donuts is one big pot full of mixed records. One track is longer than two minutes, several are less than one; records are chopped, flipped, sped up, slowed down and slapped together; there are vocal drops, noise drops, needle drops, obscure records, soul records, electric-company ads and all sorts of pirated sounds from samples he'd probably never clear. This is what you call a well-orchestrated mess.

If it sounds handcrafted, that's because it is. Dilla is the master of one instrument - the MPC drum machine - and this album serves as testimony that if you equipped him with a sampler and some dusty records, Dilla would use his God-gifted ear to cut, chop, and serve you up something brand new every time. There is nothing commercial about Donuts, and if it weren't for the vision of a label such as Stones Throw, this album might have ended up as just another Internet rumor.

Overall Rating:
4 out 5 Screwed Up Hooks