The Donut King: J Dilla’s Final Masterpiece

On the morning of Superbowl 50, when the world watches two great quarterbacks (I have no idea where Manning and Newton stack in the NFL QB pantheon, so forgive me) vie for the NFL championship, there’s another special, albeit sad, celebration: the anniversary of the death of hip-hop pioneer, James Yancey — better known as J Dilla or Jay Dee.

My music history knowledge doesn’t particularly extend deep into the realms of hip-hop, but J Dilla has left his mark on a lot of people within the genre and even those outside of it. You wouldn’t have to go to far to find someone who has heard this record and been influenced by it. If you want to have a basic understanding of this man’s reach, you need to gaze and marvel at his discography page on Wikipedia and, even then, that doesn’t showcase how far his musical vein stretched in his short life.

It’s not a day to mourn but, instead, a day to reflect and recall some of the best moments (and there are thousands, whether they’re 10 seconds or five minutes long) in the life of a great man. Ten years ago, “Donuts” dropped and, three days later, James Yancey passed away after a long battle with a rare blood disorder.

“Donuts” ominously opens with a track titled “Donuts (Outro)” which, by all accounts, is the beginning of the end; the track glitches someone spitting his name while burying an old string ensemble sample behind some fuzz. The track quickly drops into “Workinonit” which sounds the alarms, pushes out thunderous drums and the repeated lyric “Workin on it!” The entirety of “Workinonit” is such a smooth, effective opening, it also acts a wonderful point of entry for the rest of the album, whereby JD could really show off the depth of his talent and work ethic.

Dilla’s sampling ear is what set him apart from others. “Donuts” was made almost entirely by Dilla on his deathbed and tells a closing tale over the course of 43 beat driven minutes. One could look at the 31 listed tracks and see various beats spanning 11 seconds to almost three minutes and think that what was started wasn’t quite finished.

Upon listening to the entire record, however, what is revealed is quite the opposite. This is Dilla understanding he was still in his prime even in his last days; it’s him taking us on a journey through his personal collection of records. Known to be a radical collector of music over the course of his career, “Donuts” is made up almost entirely of sampled records with additional production from the man himself. Here’s a Spotify playlist with each track sampled on the record.

An example of Dilla’s ear and sampling prowess in its prime is on his creation of the track “Waves”. Given that music creation these days can be done on a mobile phone, it’s an utter marvel about how he picked up the nuances of 10cc’s “Johnny Don’t Do It” and applied them to his own work.

That’s the original track, “Waves”. Now, here’s how easy it is to make now.

Notice the devilishly simple sampling? It’s nothing significant. It’s just a snippet of a 10cc track and the resulting product is nothing short of 99 seconds of smoked out, off-kilter beat mastery.

We spoke about nuances in his music previously, but this sort of sampling requires an almost microscopic level of knowledge and experience. It seems easy to replicate there (hell, I did it for a university assessment two years ago) but understanding the fact that Yancey ripped it off a record from the early 70s and sampled it through his Boss SP-303 sampler makes it a far more special offering; it’s a mastery of what was around him. Purists argue that vinyl will always sound better than MP3s et al, much to the collective eye roll of the majority, but those arguments hold a firm ground when it comes to Dilla’s sampling; he knew what he was brilliant at and set out to execute it with ease.

What was Dilla’s contribution to Hip-Hop production? Ask a musicologist like The Roots’ bandleader Questlove and you’ll get an earful. “If you hear any song [with] a glitch in the [drum] pattern? That was Dilla,” he explains. “If you hear bouncy, filtered bass patterns? Dilla. Offbeat snaps, offbeat claps? Dilla.”

via Stones Throw

What Questlove says still rings true today, 10 years after Dilla’s passing. You’ll find tracks that are spitting fire atop the charts that all contain the Dilla touch, offbeat claps, jazz influences coupled with heavily swung drum programming. Names like Flying Lotus, Disclosure, and Flume all cite J Dilla as a key influence on their work, and you can hear that creep through in many of their productions. One could even attribute the explosion and origins of the “Australian” summer sound that’s doing the rounds to roots seeded in Dilla’s career, and “Donuts” will probably be the one word you hear from those citing their influences.

Heartbreaking it is, then, to hear tracks like “Dilla Says Go”, “Hi” and then “Bye”, all of which almost book-end the album in a way that sees Yancey telling listeners that it’s okay to let go. “Dilla Says Go” is almost a pure straight sampling of The Tramps “Rubberband” with lyrics telling us “it’s alright” and to “go” before ending on an emphatic “Let’s Go!” as the album draws to a close on the mystical, smoky and sexy “Hi”.

Interpretation can be a beautiful thing, and harbouring the knowledge that Dilla was soon to shed this mortal coil makes “Donuts” all the more personal. Our interpretation of the album will be one of reflection but also discovery; we turn around and look at the mainland while we sail off toward the horizon and “Donuts” ultimately encapsulates that imagery with striking confidence.

So when someone asks you about that beat you really dig, you can be sure that Dilla has been there, whether physically or posthumously.

Originally published at artgalleryfunknight.com on February 10, 2016.