J Dilla - Donuts

I'm publishing this article on the 20th anniversary of the release of Donuts, by J Dilla. If you want to read a piece celebrating the legacy that James Dewitt Yancey left behind in its entirety, go elsewhere, but here's an abridged version of Dilla's story: Detroit rapper-producer mastered the AKAI MPC sampler, collaborated with the greatest artists on the edge of the Black underground music scene in the late 90s and early 00s, died young of autoimmune disease. Legend says that he produced at least some of these tracks while fighting lupus in a Los Angeles hospital. The more boring truth is that he was probably using Pro Tools and the album was sequenced, the tracks named, and possibly some of the beats were produced by Peanut Butter Wolf and Jeff Jank. Again, there's some really good, click-supported journalists who've written better pieces than I ever could, so let's just knuckle down and taste some pastries.

Donuts started as a beat tape and grew into the plunderphonic odyssey we know today. I guess it still is a beat tape, but not one that any rapper would ever really spit over. J Dilla is free from the need to leave space for the rapper, or from the need to be structurally agnostic and perfectly loopable. The "Dilla Beat", that jazz meme promulgated by the likes of Questlove, Neely, and Glasper, barely shows its face on this record. The drums don't sound drunk, they sound focused, forming the foundation for Dilla's zany sampling atop them. The transitions between songs are not DJ fade smoothness or progressive rock chord change transposition, but sharp cuts, like flipping between TV channels. That makes it even more remarkable how natural all the transitions feel. "Hypnotic" is another word that gets thrown around a lot when discussing Donuts, but it's one that I'd agree with. This album is comfortable in the background, despite its showiness. You can just let it be, and it'll hang in the air rather than protest or recede entirely.

Sitting with the album in focus is just as rewarding. There's always something new going on, some new aural trick that J Dilla is able to pull. "Lightworks" turns a lipstick jingle into a groovy ode to lighting up. "Hi." and "Bye." sit right next to each other, the latter chopping background vocals into saying the word "donuts". There's some more conventional beats like the swaggering, intense "Geek Down", the sweet "U-Love", the funky "Gobstopper". The foreknowledge of his death also lets us read into the subtext of the beats. "Waves" turns a 10cc song called "Johnny Don't Do It" into a refrain of "Johnny, Do It", presumably for his little brother Illa J. "Don't Cry" chops up a soul song and stiches pieces from all over into a brand new melody, asking people not to miss him when he's gone. The album starts with an outro and ends with an intro that segue smoothly into eachother, like how a donut has no beginning and no end until you bite into it. Maybe that last one is a bit of a stretch. Some of these tracks are deep or beautiful, and some just sound like Dilla having fun. That's not necessarily a bad thing. And even as much as looking at these micro-tracks individually can be enlightening, this is an album that is more than the sum of its parts.

The cover and disc are understated, a blurry photo of the man with eyes obscured by a Detroit Tigers cap, and a handsome grey and silver cutout design of the gothic D for Detroit, D for Dilla. It's the back cover and interior pages that are most identifiably Stones Throw. The iconic Jeff Jank drawing of the 24 hr donut shop sits on the back, next to the eye-watering 31-track listing. Inside, black and white sketches of the slightly run-down, slightly goofy world from which Donuts came. You can tell that J Dilla cares a lot about the music and the people in his life and the places that he came from, but that he might not have the energy and focus he once did as a producer for Common and Erykah Badu and The Pharcyde. That doesn't mean that he's not able to get across what he means. That wider field of vision and that lack of thought given to others' sensibilities are this album's greatest strengths.

A lot of my favorite works of art look and feel effortless. That projection of effortlessness hides hours of toil and years of practice to create it. Donuts fits that description perfectly. J Dilla spent his life working to push the boundaries of hip hop, and the last record released during his lifetime is his most celebrated for good reason. He poured all he had into it.

Donuts by J Dilla is a good album, and I like it.