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That album was like the end of one generation of Dilla beats, moving on to the next. ‘Sonically, it sounded like he was coming out of that Beats, Rhymes and Life sound and moving forward towards what we have now, what his last couple of years of work were. 2 felt like he was on the verge of perfecting something,” Just Blaze said. The song made its first official appearance on the Office Space soundtrack in 1999 and wound up anchoring Fantastic Vol. Name a more iconic bass line than “Get Dis Money” - you can’t. But “Bye.” has a more intricate arrangement, where the pulse is in a constant state of flux and the song begins at the tail end of the sample loop. Like most of Dilla’s beats that wound up as Common collabs, “So Far To Go” radiates sheer warmth, and is by far the most-streamed song on Dilla’s Spotify page.
#High 5 i am alive song full#
Karriem Riggins unpacked “Bye.” - one of Dilla’s last dispatches before his death courtesy of Donuts - into a full song with Common and D’Angelo for the 2006 posthumous album The Shining. J Dilla, Common & D’Angelo - “Bye.” / “So Far To Go”
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It makes sense that Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and Carlos Nino would later fashion “Find a Way” into a gorgeous 40-something-piece orchestral arrangement. On album centerpiece “Find a Way,” Dilla chefs up an orchestral reverie as a backdrop, while Tip and Phife narrate their respective relationship growing pains. But no one can deny that its production is luscious as hell. The Love Movementdoesn’t get a fraction of the love of A Tribe Called Quest’s earlier albums. It could loop for hours, and the song’s sense of tension and anticipation would never dissipate. By contrast, the two-chord loop - sourced from a George Duke record - just chills in the cut but it never resolves. On “Thelonious,” the bass movements are unpredictable - Family Guy‘s Greased-Up Deaf Guy but in sonic form. Dre is the godfather of G-funk, but even the high-register Moog melodies he laid on top of Parliament samples don’t hold a candle to the Moog bass lines Dilla laid on top of jazz fusion samples. At least he made “Didn’ t Cha Know,” a perfect song that captures the Soulquarian ethos in a nutshell: incorporating woody hip-hop grooves into the R&B, soul, jazz, and funk traditions that stretch back to the ’60s. It’s too bad Dilla didn’t work with singers more frequently. The track is significant not only because it is very good, but also because it foreshadowed the way he would draw more on electronic elements in years that followed. A relentless four-on-the-floor kick drum steadies a careening, wobbling bassline, the pairing highlighting what makes “B.B.E. (Big Booty Express),” a song that doesn’t evoke a train chugging along (or a woman dragging a wagon down the sidewalk) so much as a descent into a mad scientist’s lair, where steam valves hiss and chemicals bubble as the scientist works at a fever pitch.
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Naturally, he tossed in a Detroit techno homage called “B.B.E. J Dilla released Welcome 2 Detroit through the British label Barely Breaking Even (BBE Music). It was like, ‘Yo, we gotta get with this kid.'” Dilla wound up producing several songs on Labcabincalifornia, including “Drop,” which transforms a silky run from jazz harp queen Dorothy Ashby into cosmic taffy, resulting in an endlessly flexible and ever-warping artifact that is grounded by some tuneful humming from the Pharcyde. “It was just ten seconds here, twenty seconds there, but the shit was ridiculous. “Q-Tip played us Jay’s beat tape and we were creaming on ourselves,” Pharcyde rapper Imani remembered. Just as he melded rap, soul, jazz, funk and R&B, those genres are deeply indebted to him today, as is evident by the array of artists and musicians that are inspired by his timeless work. As Busta Rhymes once said, “His ability to EQ and hear the music a certain way - you didn’t really have too much to do but rhyme on the shit.”īut Dilla’s renown and influence aren’t limited to rap, and they have multiplied since he died in 2006 at the young age of 32. J Dilla wasn’t just your favorite producer’s favorite producer, he was also your favorite rapper’s favorite producer. His music was preternaturally loose, as if no rhythmic grid truly existed. These are the elements of most hip-hop beats, and no producer was more adept at integrating them and allowing them to melt into each other than J Dilla. J Dilla wasn’t just your favorite producer’s favorite producer, he was also your favorite rapper’s favorite producer - and these beats are a testament to that.ĭrums, percussion, bass, samples, synths.