Price: $16.99 Retail: $19.99 You Save:$3.00
This item is Coming Soon
When J Dilla was alive and churning out albums, it was sometimes easy to forget that he was a talented hip-hop producer. His albums were often ruled by MCs, and sometimes it was easier to focus on the delivery and wordplay on the albums, and even his collaborations with other phenomenal producers like Madlib would leave you wishing for Dilla’s music to have more breathing room. WithDonuts, one of his only fully instrumental works, his ideas finally have that much-deserved breathing room, and the nuances in Dilla’s work are more easily detectable. With each track clocking in less than two minutes, one would imagine the album to come across as scatterbrained, but it’s actually so cohesive, fully-developed and self-aware that it’s eerie. Intricately weaving samples from British art rockers 10cc and rappers Mantronix on tracks like “Workinonit,” he owns the material and breathes new life into it. The album has bittersweet moments, like the heartbreaking track “Stop,” which uses a sample by Dionne Warwick, and the tracks “Hi.” and “Bye.” which remind us that Dilla made this album while anticipating his own death from terminal illness in 2006. Donuts finally made it clear that Dilla was a league in his own.
Rock and Soul Home
