Three days after the release of Donuts, J Dilla was dead. Suffering from a rare blood disease, J Dilla spent the last year of his life battling the illness, losing weight and having to perform in a wheelchair during a European tour in 2005. You wouldn’t know J Dilla (aka Jay Dee) was fighting for his life from listening to Donuts –an album crafted with the precision expected from a producer of J Dilla’s calibre and acclaim. A decade into his career J Dilla had produced everyone from Ghostface Killah, Janet Jackson, A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, Common, Raphael Saadiq and collaborated with fellow hip hop producer Malib on Welcome 2 Detroit.
A total of 31 tracks (the longest “song” is 2:57 –most tracks are just over a minute in length). The pace of the album is as varied as the artists J Dilla samples: Frank Zappa, The Beastie Boys, Malcolm McLaren (?), Dionne Warwick, the standard James Brown, et al. “Geek Down” invokes a doom essence reminiscent of RJD2’s “The Horror” while “Time: The Donuts of the Heart” is pure sexy time. [Warning from the US Surgeon General: listening to “Time: Donuts of the Heart” may cause some women to become pregnant]. –L.M Harrison
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