Happy born day to James Yancey aka Jay Dee aka J Dilla. Today would have been his 50th birthday and while he’s no longer here, his legacy lives on through his music. He has inspired so many artists through his groundbreaking work as an artist. While today is special because it’s the born day of J Dilla, it’s also important for his album, Donuts which released on February 7, 2006. I still remember buying the album on CD and listening to it for the first time in my car.
I bought the CD the day it dropped 18 years ago and was with a girl I was dating at the time. When we got back into my car and I threw the CD into my car stereo, I turned the volume to about 22 which is a non-verbal way of telling the passengers in your car that you want to listen to music. We got a few songs into the album and then she tried talking to me. I quickly let her know who I was really dating at the time when I told her I needed to listen to this album right now so we needed to hold off on exchanging words with each other. Music just speaks to me in a way that not much else can and on my first listen of J Dilla’s album, Donuts, I knew it was special. It was the song “Stop” that first caught me and my head noddin’ to the beat.
The album was full of nothing but beats and no lyrics. I was really getting into instrumental music at the time and loved what DJ Shadow, RJD2, MF Doom, Prince Paul, and DJ Krush were putting out. I get distracted easily so sometimes having a good beat and lyrics over it made it hard for me to focus. So while I love rap, sometimes I need my beats without any rapping over them. This Dilla album just hit me at the right time in my life. I listened to songs like “Mash”, “One Eleven”, “Two Can Win”, “Don’t Cry”, “One for Ghost”, “Dilla Says Go”, “U-Love”, “Bye”, and “Last Donut of the Night” over and over again. But one song hit me more than all of the others. It was a track that really settled in after Dilla passed away a few days after the album released. The song “Time: Donut of the Heart” was one that I heard and always reflected back on my life when it came on. The way the beat slows up at 1:00 and then back to the regular beat at 1:11 is beautiful. Just listen to this and tell me you don’t feel a certain way.
And it was only right for Black Thought to jump on this beat and pay homage to Dilla on the track, “Can’t Stop This” off of The Roots’ album, Game Theory which dropped a few months after Donuts released and Dilla passed away.
Happy born day to James Yancey and happy 18th anniversary to the J Dilla album, Donuts. And here’s the last donut of the night….