J Dilla

Ever since I heard 'Intergalactic' by the Beastie Boys in early 1998 when I was fourteen (and also 'Gimme Some More' by Busta Rhymes later the same year), I have been a massive fan of hip hop. As with any genre of music, hip hop brings certain stereotypes in terms of your standard listener and so as a white, middle class teenager living in rural Kent I probably didn't fit the mould too much. I learnt as much as I could living there and found new artists through friends, friend's older brothers and people I worked with at the Virgin Megastore I used to work at but as the internet wasn't as fully formed as it is now it was tough. As such most of the hip hop I liked was pretty mainstream.

It was going to uni in Brighton and meeting someone on my course that was into hip hop that I was introduced to more non-commercial hip hop such as the artists on Anticon, Madlib, Antipop Consortium, El-P, and MF Doom. Out of that list it's probably Madlib that I regard the best and his album 'Champion Sound' as 'Jaylib' that I've listened to the most. 'Jaylib' is Madlib and a producer called J Dilla (Jay Dee) and sadly it's only been in the past few years that I've come to understand the greatness and ability of the latter. Sadly he died in 2006 but the legacy he has left is quite exceptional. He worked with a wealth of mainstream artists such as A Tribe Called Quest, Common, Busta Rhymes and Erykah Badu but also produced a huge amount of music under his own name and his influence can be heard in so much contemporary hip-hop, yet so few people have heard of him.

This self-indulgent ramble about my interest in hip-hop is merely my introduction to a documentary made about J Dilla that provides an amazing insight into an incredibly talented musician and producer.