I rarely have record stories to go into this much detail about anymore but this one blows me away so I have to share.



One of my good friends Brad was in Atlanta and we wanted to go buy records in Little 5 Points, my main goals were the Deftones B-Sides & Rarities (didn’t get) and J Dilla’s The Diary. After visiting two of the three record stores in Little 5 and buying a bunch of other stuff, we stopped in Beatlab, a little known store above a costume shop that caters to DJs and sells almost exculsively hip hop. Brad went crazy and loved the store.

I found something that I was familiar with, but some things didn’t add up. As a huge Dilla fan, I was familiar with the very first J Dilla (known as Jay Dee at the time) release from 1996. The record was pressed on blue and green wax by DJ House Shoes. It was only a vague memory so I made sure to text some pics of the record to my good friend Kelly “KFresh” Frazer, the person who knows more about J Dilla’s Discography than anyone I know.

Shortly after that, he sent confirmation from House Shoes that it indeed a test pressing.

When I got home, I asked Kelly some questions and sent House Shoes a tweet. I basically learned that it is the first “known” test pressing of Dilla’s first solo record!

it only recently sunk in that here in Atlanta, I found the first known test pressing of Dilla’s first solo release! As someone from Detroit I was fortunate enough to be a fan of Dilla’s during his life and even to see him perform live!



There’s just something poetic to the fact that the day his “lost” album is released that this album made 20 years ago is unearthed, I’m just beyond belief that I found it!