February 9, 2013, at Detroit’s Fillmore Theater, on one of the city’s few remaining vibrant blocks along Woodward Avenue. The air carries a typically Midwestern chill, though the streets are mercifully clear of the snow brought in by a large system that rolled in off the Great Lakes and pummeled the city a week earlier. The lobby of the venue is like a bazaar, booths from local streetwear vendors, booksellers, and indie labels display their wares; Maurice Malone’s Hip-Hop Shop must have felt like this 20 years ago.
A car pulls up to the front of the theater, crunching the curbside remains of pebble-flecked brown slush under its tires. A burly man in a crisply pressed black suit with a neatly trimmed beard and a wave in his hair steps out and opens the back door of the vehicle. He helps Ma Dukes exit the car and whisks her to the balcony entrance as security frisks ticketholders. She looks smaller in person, but it may be a visual trick caused by the sheer mass of the hulking man accompanying her: A cross between professional wrestler and Baptist preacher. He holds the door for her as she gives a quick wave to the smattering of people calling her name.
Mirroring his career in a way, this is only the second Dilla Day Detroit, despite annual parties being well established in places like New York, Los Angeles, and London for the last seven years.
“I wanted his name in lights in his own hometown … we’ve got a young man doing incredible work that the whole world is admiring and [Detroiters] don’t even know who he is,” said Ma Dukes.1 Tonight, her wish is granted: Along the marquee of the Fillmore, under the event’s details, is a simple phrase, the plain truth behind every beat that touched the lives of the people waiting in line: J Dilla has done the work.
The crowd in attendance is a marketer’s dream, a grab bag of demographics across race, gender, and age. They’ve come from Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto, and all over Michigan. They form a sea of Tigers caps as they walk into the concert hall. Some of the kids in the crowd must have been in pre-school when Fan-tas-tic Vol. 1 began to circulate, when House Shoes was playing the freshest Dilla beats at St. Andrews. It’s a testament to the timeless nature of Dilla’s music. He’s playing tonight, House Shoes. Along with Talib Kweli, DJ Spinna, Frank-n-Dank, and J. Rocc. Violinist and composer Miguel-Atwood Ferguson and a four-piece band play live arrangements of Dilla joints, written specifically for this night. Jazz saxophonist Allan Barnes makes an unannounced appearance, giving an impromptu solo rendition of “Think Twice,” by his former teacher and bandmate, Donald Byrd, which Dilla covered in one of Welcome 2 Detroit’s more inspired and surprising moments. Lit by a lone spotlight on a darkened stage, Barnes’s restrained performance in honor of Dilla and Byrd, who passed the previous week, gives the crowd a chance to pause and reflect on the loss of two of Detroit’s best. After Barnes finishes, a pair of men in their mid- to late 30s, dressed for the night in blazers, sweaters over collared shirts, and chains shining on their chests, each let out an impressed Whooo and give each other dap. “That is a talent I do not have,” says one.
The evening seems as much an opportunity to celebrate Detroit as Dilla. The iconic Tigers’ logo is projected large on the backdrop. The mayor of neighboring Highland Park says a few encouraging words about perseverance and hope, the director of a local gallery and hip-hop cultural center spins records between sets. When Ma Dukes hits the stage that night, she talks about ensuring the children of the city have choices and opportunities. Given Dilla’s complicated relationship with his hometown, the place he repped until the day he died, smiling beneath the brim of his Tigers cap on the cover of Donuts, it’s somewhat strange to watch the city try to reclaim him. Give people their flowers while they’re here. Such talk is best saved for later. Tonight is for the music.
And there will be music. For nearly six hours the crowd is treated to classic hits and deep cuts, as well as notable songs Dilla sampled, a secret language shared among those in attendance. When Shoes drops “Open Your Eyes” by Bobby Caldwell, which Dilla flipped for Common’s classic love song “The Light,” a cheer goes up through the crowd. This song would be a piece of cruise ship schmaltz anywhere else, but tonight, in this room, in this crowd, it’s a sacred text. Arms raised, fingers pointed to the sky, they sing in unison, they sing to strangers, they sing to friends, “There are times, when you need someone, I will be by your side …”
Five months later, the City of Detroit would file for bankruptcy, but tonight the spirit and will of its people feels unbreakable.
In the years since his passing, J Dilla’s legacy has seen equal parts highs and lows. The Shining, estimated at 75 percent complete when Dilla died, was finished by Karriem Riggins at Ma Dukes’s personal request, and released in August 2006. Other beat compilations have continued to trickle out over the years, notably the Pete Rock-curated Jay Stay Paid in 2009. Despite Dilla’s assertion that the music on Donuts was too busy for an MC to handle, it hasn’t stopped acts like The Roots, Common, or Busta Rhymes from rhyming over it. Ghostface Killah took the beat Dilla left for him by name (“One for Ghost”) and released it as the appropriately comic yet longing “Whip You With a Strap” in 2006, a month after Dilla’s passing. The song is a rare example of a Donuts beat being, not improved upon, but used to make something great in its own right.
In January 2013, Stones Throw rereleased Donuts as a box set of 45s, along with an extra disc of “Signs” and “Sniper Elite”/“Murder Goons,” a pair of vocal tracks made during late 2005 (MF Doom rapping over “Anti-American Graffiti,” and Ghostface Killah on “Geek Down,” respectively). Pitchfork gave it a perfect score and named it “Best New Reissue.”2 Ma Dukes continues to work tirelessly, appearing at events around the world, giving interviews, and running the J Dilla Foundation, a non-profit that works to promote music education in the inner city. Dilla’s brother Illa J released his first album Yancey Boys in 2008, a collection of 14 songs made by his late brother. Bringing one story back around, he joined Slum Village in 2011.
Established MCs like Big Sean and Drake, or up-and-comers like Chance the Rapper and Joey Bada$$ continue to find inspiration in Dilla’s music, dropping freestyles on mixtapes or name checking him in their verses. Jazz musicians such as pianist Robert Glasper and electronic artists like Flying Lotus compose and perform new arrangements of his work regularly, proving how versatile Dilla’s music continues to be, how it works across genres and styles. In 2013 Kanye West told a documentary crew, as only Kanye West can, that Dilla’s music, “felt like drugs. I mean, his music sounded like good pussy.”3
Madlib rarely speaks about Dilla in interviews, when he does interviews at all. He said everything he cared to through two volumes of his Beat Konducta series in 2009, dedicated to the memory of his late friend and partner. Like Donuts, they’re filled with their own mysteries and codes to unpack, sprinkled through a nonstop blend of funk and soul.
While his musical reputation continued to thrive after his passing, Dilla’s estate was left in a shambles. As reported by Kelly Carter in a 2009 VIBE magazine article, Dilla’s unpaid medical expenses and outstanding tax debts, combined with a breakdown in communication between his heirs and his executor, meant his family hadn’t seen a dime from his work since his death. Things became so bizarrely litigious that Ma Dukes’s initial attempts to start the foundation in her son’s name were met with a cease and desist letter from his estate.
She later admitted her focus on taking care of her son may have been to the detriment of future financial security.
“He was trying to prepare me for over a year—so I’m not faultless. While I was there taking care of him for the two years, he always would be like, ‘Okay, I want you to set up this, and I want you to do this. … [But] I didn’t care because I thought he’s gonna be alright. And even if I had to stay with him for the rest of his life, I knew he’d be alive and taking care of his business.”4
In an effort to help her gain control of her son’s estate, Egon obtained a lawyer for her, paid for with his own savings: “I wouldn’t even have any money right no
w, if it wasn’t [for] Jay Dee. So if I spent all of it, no matter how much it is, then at least I’ve done what I can with what he made possible for me,” he said.
With Ma Dukes established as the primary executor of the estate, numerous projects once thought lost have started to trickle out. Frank-n-Dank’s 48 Hours finally saw proper release in 2013 after almost a decade of bootlegging, and at the time of this writing, Dilla’s shelved vocal project is free from major label limbo and also scheduled for release. And there will likely be much more.
In the summer of 2012 a Detroit-area record store owner named Jeff Bubeck bought an abandoned storage unit that was filled with records, around 6,000, he told NPR: “Tons of seventies jazz, really a lot of off-the-wall, obscure stuff. There was a little bit of everything in there.”5 Impressed with enough of what he found, Bubeck bought the unit. Upon returning to it, he found a plastic tub tucked in the back, packed tightly with cassettes, and some junk mail addressed to a “James Yancey.” Bubeck didn’t think anything of it. Later, on a whim, he ran the name through an internet search, and learned he’d stumbled onto the mother lode of Dilla artifacts: Most if not all of his record collection, packed away after he left the D, and forgotten about once his mother left to join him in Los Angeles.
The second the news hit, social media exploded. “It was like instant backlash,” said Bubeck. “‘What business does he have selling Jay’s stuff?’ That’s what it was. ‘Who the fuck are you?’”6 However, of greater interest was the knowledge that Bubeck had ended up with stacks of beat tapes that had never seen the light of day, even among Dilla completists who scoured the internet over the years searching for leaked batches. Though tempted briefly to sell them to the highest bidder, and threatened by an unnamed record company over their ownership, Bubeck, having learned the condition of Dilla’s estate, ultimately decided to return them to Ma Dukes.
“I just felt … I’ll be damned if I’m giving it to any record company. In the moment, I was just trying to do the right thing.” Bubeck put a call in to Ma Dukes, took her to the storage unit and gave her the tapes. “It was her son’s stuff, you know? I told her ‘take it with you, it’s yours.’ It felt really good that she had it again.”7
Ma Dukes was floored when she discovered the tapes not only contained beats, but rough song sketches and freestyles. “I didn’t expect to hear his voice in any of the music … he’s not sick, he’s not suffering and he’s just alive.” Ma Dukes estimated the tapes contain hundreds of beats, enough to keep new Dilla material coming out for years. The first batch dropped in 2013, titled The Lost Scrolls. For a woman who had lost so much in the struggle to preserve her son’s legacy and music, she’d finally regained something precious.
“Dilla was my backbone, my support … when he left, I was standing alone. I never mourned normally, not knowing whether to be angry or to cry, I couldn’t cry, I hadn’t shed a tear … I was in denial of everything, I just had this void … [the tapes] brought back what Dilla had said to me in California. He was in the wheelchair, he grabbed my [hands] and he said, ‘I want to thank you for all that you have done, and I want you to know, you’re going to be all right, I promise you. You’re gonna be all right.’”8
And for the first time, a mother cried for her son. Another circle completes.
Endnotes
Chapter One
1Daniel J. Wallace, The Lupus Book, 5th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 5.
2Anslem Samuel, “J Dilla, The Lost Interview, Circa 2004,” XXL.com, February 10, 2010, http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2010/02/j-dilla-the-lost-interview-circa-2004/3/
3Kelly Carter, “Jay Dee’s Last Days,” Detroit Free Press, February 23, 2006, http://www.freep.com/article/20061127/ENT04/111270003/
4“J Dilla Still Shining (Part 1 of 4),” YouTube Video, 8:30, posted by Bryan “B.Kyle” Atkins, February 11, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMEWWKg0pz8
5“Stussy—J Dilla Documentary Part 3 of 3,” YouTube Video, 11:19, posted by “StussyVideo,” May 25, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOvYv79Lb6Q
6Alvin Blanco, “J Dilla: Still Lives Through,” Scratch Magazine, May/June 2006, http://thediggersunion.com/enjoy-and-be-educated/j-dilla-still-lives-through-scratch-magazine-mayjune-2006/
Chapter Two
1Simon Trask, “Future Shock,” Music Technology, December 1988, http://www.mobeus.org/archives/juanatkins/
2“Jeff Mills in 1997, old school, underground mixing + interview. Pt1,” YouTube video, 8:50, posted by “chvaxy,” September 13, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A2CwGBDlLE
3Billboard, “MC Breed,” http://www.billboard.com/artist/276847/mc-breed/biography
4Carleton S. Gholz, “Welcome to tha D: Making and Remaking Hip Hop Culture in Post-Motown Detroit,” Hip-Hop in America: A Regional Guide, ed. Mickey Hess (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2010), 397.
Chapter Three
1Ronnie Reese, “Biography,” http://www.j-dilla.com/biography/
2“KillerBoomBoxTV: A Conversation With Ma Dukes Pt. 1,” YouTube video, 13:19, posted by “KillerBoomBoxTV,” February 23, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6pB2qvZNjY
3Ronnie Reese, “Son of Detroit: Jay Dee Remembered,” Wax Poetics, June/July 2006, 99–110.
4“KillerBoomBoxTV: A Conversation With Ma Dukes Pt. 1.”
5Ibid.
6Reese, “Biography.”
7“Waajeed, DJ Spinna, Raydar Ellis discussing J Dilla at BEI, Part of BHF10 Week,” YouTube video, 8:23, posted by “justhunte,” July 13, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fugDzBQ0fuo
8“J Dilla’s Vinyl Collection—Crate Diggers,” YouTube video, 26:44, posted by “fuse,” March 20, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL3ENrZwjmw
9Reese, “Son of Detroit,” 102.
10Blanco, Scratch Magazine.
11“KillerBoomBoxTV: A Conversation With Ma Dukes Pt. 1.”
12Dean Van Nguyen, “Kindred Soul,” Wax Poetics, Issue 55, Summer 2013, 30.
13Van Nguyen, “Kindred Soul,” 32.
14Reese, “Son of Detroit,” 101.
15Van Nguyen, “Kindred Soul,” 32.
16Marisa Aveling, “Detroit Lion,” Wax Poetics, Issue 55, Summer 2013, 36–41.
17Reese, “Biography.”
18Van Nguyen, “Kindred Soul,” 32.
19“Bling47 Breaks—Dilla Edition: Get This Money—DJ Spinna,” YouTube video, 1:45, posted by “Bling47music,” May 8, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1ytpeDMKAU
20The successor to The Scene, which took over the 6:00 p.m. timeslot on WGPR in 1988.
21Hobey Eclin, “Dial 313 for the 411 on Hip-Hop,” Metro Times, October 2–8, 1996, 21.
22“Bling47 Dilla Breaks Edition: DJ Amir—Love,” YouTube video, 2:28, posted by “Bling47music,” February 15, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39HVVG02Lvo
23Van Nguyen, “Kindred Soul,” 30.
24“Lecture: Q-Tip (New York, 2013),” online video, 2:05:53, posted by “Red Bull Music Academy,” June 1, 2013, http://vimeo.com/67440689
25Red Bull Music Academy, “Lecture: Q-Tip (New York, 2013),” http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/q-tip
26Referring to the level of quantization on Dilla’s beats. Quantization refers to a process of automatically correcting improper drum timing by “rounding” the note to the nearest beat. Many samplers articulate this setting as a “swing percentage,” to denote how rigid or loose the rounding is: Too much and the beat can sound artificial and mechanical, not enough and it can sound sloppy and off-time.
27Red Bull Music Academy, “Lecture: Q-Tip” (New York, 2013).
28Ibid.
Chapter Four
1Don Hogan, “The J Dilla Interview,” RIME, Issue 8, 2003, http://culturekingmedia.com/2010/02/07/j-dilla-interviewed-by-moonsatellite-for-rime-magazine-feature/
2Jeff “Chairman” Mao, “Behind the Boards: The Legacy of Marley Marl,” Ego Trip, Issue 12, http://www.egotripland.com/marley-marl-interview-ego-trip-magazine/
&n
bsp; 3“Introducing Marley Marl!,” YouTube video, 10:00, posted by “Diggiti,” July 13, 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vof_jmhBSU8
4Bryan Coleman, Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies (New York: Villard Books, 2007), 250.
5Ibid., 305.
6Ibid., 307.
7Fullerton, Jason, “J Dilla,” Attack and Rebuild, March 2013, http://issuu.com/attackrebuild/docs/attackandrebuild-issue1#download
8“J Dilla Still Shining (Part 2 of 4),” YouTube Video, 8:30, posted by Bryan “B.Kyle” Atkins, February 11, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCMkaJtYtPY
9Christopher R. Weingarten, “Pete Rock Slams Lupe Fiasco for Crappy ‘T.R.O.Y.’ Bite,” SPIN, May 22, 2012, http://www.spin.com/articles/pete-rock-slams-lupe-fiasco-crappy-troy-bite/
10A 2011 interview between the then 20-year-old Odd Future leader Tyler the Creator and Canadian weirdo Nardwuar saw Tyler wax rhapsodic when presented with records by jazz musicians Alan Tew and Roy Ayers.
11Joseph G. Schloss, Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop (Middletown, OH: Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 122.
12“Bling47 Dilla Breaks Edition: House Shoes—In the Streets,” YouTube video, 3:01, posted by “Bling47music,” October 1, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN_07KaW2t8
13Bootie Brown, Interview, Jusayin Radio, August 16, 2012.
14James Yancey, liner notes to Welcome 2 Detroit, BBE, BBE BG CD 001, CD, 2001.
15Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, “Questlove Explains “Little Brother’s Beat,” Hulu video, January 3, 2012, http://www.hulu.com/watch/315258
16“J Dilla Still Shining (Part 2 of 4),” YouTube video, 8:30, posted by Bryan “B.Kyle” Atkins, February 11, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCMkaJtYtPY
Chapter Five
1“Stussy—J Dilla Documentary Part 3 of 3.”
2Ibid.
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