January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
Jay Dee changed your life — you just might not know it
One layer of this coating has been sharply peeled loose, left on the side of the planet where all the other ghosts end up, floating crossed-legged, trying to quietly figure out why they won’t be remembered accurately.
This ghost in particular, I will remember him absolutely until I can personally shake his hand and offer him the clearest representation of his legacy available — my own. Jay Dee changed my life, and I’m aware of it. He changed yours too, even if you have no idea who the hell I’m talking about.
At the core of it, Jay Dee, a.k.a. Dilla is quite possibly the best hip-hop producer who ever shook drum patterns from his hands. At the edge of everything else, he is a beat cosmonaut who planted snare shaped flags just deep enough in brains and hearts for damn near 15 years.
He’s from Detroit, but he was a city unto himself, with zoning regulations and a fantastic health care system. Dilla’s more than a musician, he’s a completely legitimate area where sounds were grown, raised, shared and stored at the appropriate moments.
The whole neo-soul sound movement is an idea that he got tired of three years before it really planted its fender rhodes and kufi soaked dome into the collective cultural consciousness. It all started with the drum, and Dilla’s understanding of how hearts don’t thump on beat, how the small irregularities of life are what can make days, moments, and songs better than all this cold gloss and hot shine.
He invented the slum sound, the slightly delayed, out of the pocket-into the beltloop method of programming drums that gave Erykah Badu a career and D’Angelo a cape made of clear inspiration covering up a completely legitimate chance at saving modern R&B. Listen to Voodoo, then check out early Slum Village, or even the drum lines on the Pharcyde’s second record. They’re all branches from the same tree, sprouting wholesale from the middle of Dilla’s endless moxie.
He never got the commercial regard that he deserved, but that was never his focus. He was about the music, was too busy fashioning songs that changed minds to worry about recognition or even eating or sleeping, as evidenced by his declining health.
Dilla passed away just over a fortnight ago, and my life hasn’t been the same since. Neither is yours, you’re just not aware. I’ll prove it to you. Email me at [email protected] and I’ll email you a collection of Dilla’s work that will keep you staggered for as long it takes for you to apologize for not loving him while he was here. Jay, thanks for changing my mind, about everything worth listening to.[[In-content Ad]]
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