This weekend will see the 14th release by the hip-hop producer J Dilla. The 14th posthumous release, that is. Dilla, born James Yancey, died a decade ago from a rare blood disease called TTP. At that stage he was already a producer of renown, having worked first with the group Slum Village, then A Tribe Called Quest, then everyone from Busta Rhymes to Janet Jackson. But since his passing at 32, the influence and significance of Dilla’s music has only grown, to the extent that trawling through his recorded material has become something of a cottage industry.
There’s a lot of music to mine. Dilla’s signature style was creating short, textured loops of music that run to less than two minutes in length. Samples of soul classics would be pitched to unusual tempos, edited to repeat at unexpected moments, creating something that was both familiar and unusual. In the final years of his life in particular, Dilla created these songs at a prodigious rate. Dillatronic, a collection released only last year, contained 40 “rare” new beats alone.
The spin on the latest release, The Diary, is that it was the last album that Dilla intended to put out. In truth it was more something he was expected to, the second of his major-label deal with MCA. Rather than showcasing his production, Dilla wanted to prove his skills as an MC. He enlisted producers such as 90s veterans Madlib and Pete Rock and an up-and-coming Kanye West to help with the instrumentals. But still, the best tracks on the album are Dilla’s own productions: the Gary Numan-inspired Trucks or a flute-looped, drum fill-driven reboot of Fuck The Police.
Why has the cult of Dilla kept going? “It’s just so good right?!” says Francis Redman, host of NTS Radio’s the Hot Selection, which regularly champions artists who owe a debt to Dilla. “I would also say his music genuinely is unique. The samples he chose, how he flipped them, the way he layered sounds: it existed in a space all of its own.”
Dilla’s work also anticipated a trend he couldn’t have seen coming: the rise of headphones music. In the 90s, hip-hop was made for the club; Dilla was seen by fans at the time as an antidote to P Diddy’s Cristal-popping rap. Nowadays, that’s changed. “A lot of producers now are interested in music that is at home in both the club and the headphones,” says Redman, “I don’t know if Dilla was intentionally pursuing this but his beats have so much soul and intensity.”
The Diary may not be a classic collection, but it has enough about it that you know it’s a Dilla product. And you can also be confident it won’t be his last. Somebody, somewhere will have another drive of music.
The Diary is out now on Pay Jay/Mass Appeal
