Tomorrow marks the 3rd anniversary of the death of James D. Yancey, better known to the hip-hop world as producer-extraordinaire Jay Dee or J Dilla (for short???). Like many others, I didn't know anything about J Dilla until he died which is unfortunate but it's also indicative of the type of person and artist J Dilla was. See, once you start doing a little legwork on Dilla's career, you realize that you've heard plenty of his music before. Without getting too deeply into his resume, if you've heard Janet Jackson's "Got Til It's Gone", you've heard J Dilla. If you've heard D'Angelo's "How Does It Feel", you've heard J Dilla. If you've heard Q-Tip's "Vivrant Thing", you've heard J Dilla.
And despite these credentials and so many more underground hip-hop classics under his belt, probably only other musicians and the most devout fans on Okayplayer, message board of The Roots and general hub of the neo-soul movement (of which Dilla was an innovator), knew how accomplished Jay Dee was. The thing with Jay Dee is that he's not the type of hip-hop producer that started cropping up more and more in the late '90s. You can probably blame Sean "Puffy" Combs for it, but at some point during the Bling Era in the mid-to-late '90s, the producers and beatsmiths behind the rappers started asserting their presence in front of cameras. Producers like Puffy, Timbaland, and Dr. Dre and then Scott Storch started making cameos in music videos and eventually they achieved the same celebrity status that was previously only accessible to the rappers. Today it's come to a logical endpoint where DJ Khaled, an occasional producer, is known more for his cocky "We The Best" slogan than for his musical output or anything else.
While there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, the fact that someone like Jay Dee eschewed that sort of self-aggrandizement altogether deserves a certain kind of respect. He wasn't in videos, (to my knowledge) didn't do many interviews, didn't require rappers to shout him out in the songs, and didn't peddle his music lightly, even though he had the talent and accessibility to have worked with some of the biggest names in music. He was an introvert, more than happy to keep hammering away on his MPC in his basement, in his own world, constantly mining the musical landscape to evolve his music.
And maybe that's the reason a sort of "cult of J Dilla" has risen from his ashes. After so many years of Jay Dee not giving himself proper due, so many of his fans have taken it upon themselves to do so for him. Since he chose never to mythologize himself, his fans feel the need to forge his myth and legacy for him. While it may be somewhat misguided and at times overzealous (I personally don't enjoy middle-career Dilla so much as early- and late-career Dilla), it is necessary. And considering Jay Dee passed away right on the heels of the release of Donuts, a masterful meditation on life and death that he finished while laying sick in his hospital bed, it's hard for any music nerd not to immediately idolize him as some sort of legend.
For more insight into J Dilla's "instrumental" opus, Donuts, No Trivia is celebrating "Donuts Month" by selecting a single track from the album each day and offering some excellent commentary on it.
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