This wouldn’t be a production blog without talking about one of the greatest producers James Yancey, aka Jay Dee, aka J Dilla. While listening to alot of his work the past couple days I was thinking, whats my favorite Dilla beats?..that’s a hard choice. Not only because he has alot of work that’s top notch(released and leaked beat tapes), but he was really versatile and had different styles for different eras in his career, The Donut Era Dilla, Ruff Draft Era Dilla, early Slum Village area..ect

Portrait of J Dilla making beats

It’s impossible to make a definitive list, but these are some of my personal favorites.

5.) Slum Village- Raise it Up

Alot of people are more familiar with the smoothed out type of beats Dilla does, me personally I tend to like the quirky, off kilter type of stuff from his catalog. When I first hear the bloops and bleeps for Raise it up, it stood out from all the other joints on the Slum Village Fantastic Vol.2 album. Bugged thing about this is, the keyboard sounds is from a sample and at the time everybody was sampling Soul & Old School R&B, not Electronica/Techno music, but according to Wikipedia, the artist of the sample didn’t want to sue Dilla when they found out he used it because they were big fans..instead they asked to work with Dilla on a new track!..lol

4.) The Red

This is from the Jaylib album. I always like this one because the bass line and drums are hitting so hard together, till it makes you nod to it..

3.) One for Ghost/Whip You with a strap

I like this because as a producer, sometimes you may make a track with a particular artist in mind, and on Donuts Dilla named this beat “One for Ghost”, Ghost must of heard it and said “Yeah that IS me”, and made a song out of it and put it on his album “Whip You With a Strap”. So I like that you see the process right there from beat to full song.

One for Ghost from J Dilla Donuts:

Ghostface- Whip You with a Strap

2.) Busta Rhymes ft. Cassidy & Papoose- Psycho

Dilla always had great chemistry with Busta (as well as Common), so it was only right that to honor his mans Dilla, Busta released a mixtape a couple years ago making joints with Dilla beats. I was a fan of the more harder type of joints Dilla did, and I guess it took a Dilla beat to bring it out, because this is the best I ever heard Cassidy spit..lol..

1.) Make Em NV

Like I said I before, alot of people associate Dilla with the smoothed out, musical tracks, but this my favorite J Dilla beat, one of my fav Dilla songs for that matter..shit is just HARD! The drums smack you in the face, and the wizardry to take the little bell sounds you hear that sound all pretty and calm and turn it into a song that bang you right in the chest is what defines a master at work.