IDK why… maybe it’s just realizing he’s been out of the game as long as he as at this point.

I’m reminiscing on when i was like 13, 14… dude was like allll I listened to.

When I first got into beatmaking/producing, I knew vaguely that the stuff I was listening to was made from older music, just revamped. I was looking in the credits for the samples that everyone were using. You’d come up with the usual shit, 70s/80s R&B and all that… But trying to trace Dilla’s blueprints tossed me down a musical path I’ve never come back from. This dude was flipping 70s prog rock, kitschy/primitive electronic records, shit—even stuff that, during his time, had JUST come out (Stereolab, Jamiroquai, Daft Punk side projects, an assload of other shit no one else would touch, etc.), but no matter what the source was, he always came with that unique spin that made it his own.

But I mean, fuck the samples and all that nerdy shit, really. Some of the records Dilla used were awful as shit. Dilla was just REALLY good, THAT was the draw.

Like all great artists, people weren’t even really ready for him. People still complain about the last two Tribe Called Quest albums, or Q-Tip’s first solo (which has aged fucking awesome.)

But also like great artists, so much that came after him wears his influence.

(I won’t even go on the drum tangent.)

Hip Hop has definitely changed a few times over since his passing. He was gone before anyone even knew who Soulja Boy was, or before Kanye was thought of as more than a producer with a loud mouth. And yet, dude has stuff that’s still so ahead of it’s time.

I love cats like Timbaland and The Neptunes, etc., but, as much credit as they get for where Hip Hop has gone sonically over the past 10-15 years… this guy Dilla has beats from the late 90s that were already anticipating Hip Hop’s fixation NOW with blissed-out/dragging-tempo/electronic/ambient kinds of styles. Shit, as a matter of fact, it was Pharrell—at the top of his “I produced everything”-ness—who was talking up a storm about Dilla on national television. He knows where he got the un-quantized drum shit from.

I mean shit… I haven’t even gone into his ties to all the other parts of the Hip Hop universe.

The legend that Slum Village’s demo tape made The Roots and D’Angelo scrap “Things Fall Apart” and “Voodoo” respectively and start from scratch back in the late 90s.

The fact that Dilla was essentially the reason cats like The Roots and D’Angelo and Erykah and Common and Mos/Kweli and Bilal etc, etc, came together at the turn of the millennium.  How, stylistically, he took Pete Rock and Tribe’s rulebooks and just kept updating it and updating it and updating it until they couldn’t even keep up. (It’s true.)

And even though Hip Hop has found some new life in exploring sonics outside of the boom bap traditionalism that was —(to a degree, but he reinvented himself all the time)—synonymous with Dilla… cats like Flying Lotus and Hudson Mohawke prove that his stamp is STILL pretty damn firm.

Idk… ever since middle school I’ve been talking with folks about Dilla like I would any of my favorite artists from time to time, to the point that—now, 6 years removed from his passing (!!!!!), it’s all just ramble-y musings on where his whole thing has sown in to the groundwork in 2012.

But I mean, intellectual BS aside, there’s the music.

And if you’ve heard it, there’s no need for discussion about that.

It’s fucking great.

Happy Birthday Dilla

Thanks.

Lincolnites, me and $bill will be playing everything we got with this guy’s name on it at Duffy’s, Tuesday night. There will be crazy beats. And free donuts.