To end my February 7 (Dilla's Born Day) to February 10 (Dilla's Death) series of Dilla stan write-ups and dedications, I will drop this final post about an album that still effects me to this day. The circumstances surrounding "Donuts" was electric for me, as I was entranced by the "Donuts" promo version floating around on the web and ordered my copy on vinyl plus a bonus 7" from SandboxAutomatic and was awaiting its arrival. I was already a Stan for Dilla's instrumental series on Bling47 and the Fantastic Vol.2 instrumentals that never left my rotation and ater hearing what he did with some of the samples on "Donuts", I was excited to hear the real thing.
About a week before the album officially came out, I was digging in a thrift store for old 45′s and found the Gene Chandler sample that Dilla had used on the outro for "Donuts" with the quote "It's star time at the Regal Theatre..." and I had an odd tingle that I had unearthed some hidden gem and ran home to log in to Myspace (before Facebook came along) to message Dilla and tell him that I found the sample he used on the bootleg copy of Donuts with Stones Throw drops all over it.
By the time the real album came out on Dilla's birthday (Feb 7), Dilla passed three days later (Feb 10) and I realized I would never got a response to my post on Myspace. Since then, I constantly revisit this album to marvel at the magic he embedded in it. The theme of the tracks with samples saying things like "your gonna miss me" "my people" "say goodbye" seems like Dilla was talking with the music, embracing his mortality and offering a swan song with the choice of music and chops. Much ink has been spilled over this album, but I took this album as inspiration in pure form to follow his lead with offering short versions and sketches of music as both a teaser and a way to get the ideas out of my own head even in the raw form, for people to digest.
This album changed the way I made both my artwork and my music. It helped me rationalize the continued sampling of information (art, music, visuals, concepts, etc) despite living in an age where copyright laws hamper creativity. I still find new things I love about this album, but I use it as a springboard for ideas whenever I am in a slump. J Dilla changed my life indeed.
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on point
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