History Music / JDilla

During an extended hospital stay in Los Angeles during the summer of 2005, Some of Dilla's friends from Stones Throw Records brought him a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_SP-303 Boss SP-303 sampler]] and a small 45 record player so he could continue to produce music while in the hospital. Dilla proceeded to begin work on what would become the final album released during his lifetime: ''Music/{{Donuts}}''. 29 out of the album's 31 tracks were created while Dilla stayed in the hospital.

* {{Determinator}}: And ''how''. You'd think a fatal disease would have at least slowed him down. But no. He was working on two albums (''Donuts'' and ''The Shining''), finished one of them (and lived to see it released), and had completed more than the half of the other album by the time he died. Heck, he made 29 out of 31 of Donuts' tracks in the ''hospital''.

* {{Determinator}} : And ''how''. You'd think a fatal disease would have at least slowed him down. But no. He was working on two albums (Donuts and The Shining), finished one of them (and lived to see it released), and had completed more than the half of the other album by the time he died. Heck, he made 29 out of 31 of Donuts' tracks in the ''hospital''.

* IAmTheBand: Dilla was a multi-instrumentalist, and often accompanied his samples with his own chords, or replaced the samples completely if clearance issues arose. The best example of a 100% Dilla composition is Common's [[https://youtu.be/DhCmyUUD1c4?t=217 "It's Your World (Pt. 2)"]] from Common's 2005 album ''Be''.
* InstrumentalHipHop: Considered to be one of the best producers all-time.
* InTheBlood: Dilla's mother and father were a opera singer and bassist, respectively. After his death, his little brother John dropped out of university, took up the rap name Illa J and continued his brother's legacy.

** His second vocal album ''The Shining'' was only 75% completed at his death. But before his death, Dilla entrusted his longtime friend Karriem Riggins to finish the album.

---> '''J Dilla:''' "[...] That was actually a category that we didn’t actually wanna be in. I thought the music came off like that, but we didn’t realize that shit then. I mean, you gotta listen to the lyrics of the shit. Niggas was talking about getting head from bitches. It was like a nigga from Native Tongues never woulda said that shit. I don’t know how to say it. It’s kinda fucked up, because the audience we were trying to give to were actually people we hung around. Me, myself, I hung around regular ass Detroit cats. Not the backpack shit that people kept putting out there like that. I mean, I ain’t never carried no goddamn backpack. But like I said, I understand to a certain extent. I guess that’s how the beats came off on some smooth type of shit. And at that time, that’s when Ruff Ryders [was out] and there was a lot of hard shit on the radio, so our thing was we’re gonna do exactly what’s not on the radio."

* DreamTeam: With fellow producer/rapper Madlib. Under the name "Jaylib", they released ''Champion Sound'' in 2003.

* GenreBusting[=/=]NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly: He was hip hop and R&B by definition, but his sound was quite experimental, taking cues from soul, electronica, rock, pop, jazz, funk, breakbeat and many other genres.