In the store | J DILLA'S DONUTS 33 1/3

33 1/3's book on J Dilla's Donuts will be released April 24, 2014. When we first heard about the book, the first reaction was pride that one of J Dilla's records would make it into a series that has honored classic albums from Paul's Boutique to The Velvet Underground & Nico. And the second reaction was, who the hell is writing this thing? Is he going to get in touch with the label that put out the record?

The author is Jordan Ferguson, and he did get in touch. He interviewed everyone he could who was associated with the album, and many of Dilla's colleagues from years before. The book is not just about Donuts – it covers his background, the music scene in Detroit, how he got into beat making, and the audience relationship with this final album he completed.

We didn't read a word of the book until it was in print, with no say or sway in what was written – exactly as it should be.

33 1/3 has kindly allowed us to post an excerpt from the book. The chapter "Workinonit" deals with the actual creation of the album and what was happening in Dilla's life in the months leading up to its release.







Everyone at Stones Throw agreed the music that

would end up on Donuts was exceptional (Jank remembered

thinking it was the best beat tape he'd ever heard),

but Egon had some reservations; he was more interested

in pursuing a follow-up to Champion Sound.

"If it wasn't for Chris, Donuts wouldn't have

happened because Chris said, 'We're making an instrumental

record around Jay Dee because that's all he can

do.' I was the first person to say 'That's ridiculous, you

need to get the next Jaylib record done because the Jaylib

record is the one that made him healthy during his first

bout with lupus.' And Chris is like, 'No, we're going to

do an instrumental record because it's all he can do, that's

what we're going to do.' Period, full stop."

There was one problem: Because it had originated as

a "beat tape" – short sketches of the kind producers would

use to shop their work to rappers and labels – the CD

Dilla had given them was only 22-minutes long.

"So the Donuts beat CD comes around and I really

remember it as being a mutual understanding that we

wanted to release this as a record … It's a little out of the

ordinary for a label to put out a whole record of beats,

some of which could potentially be profitable for the

producer later on, but we decide to wing it," said Jank.

"The only question is, how is this 22-minute CD

with some rugged transitions going to become a record?

Dilla wasn't saying he was going to turn it into an album

overnight, and Wolf and Egon weren't going to work on

it, I think because they were both a little afraid of making

a wrong turn and getting on Dilla's bad side."

Dilla's temper was no secret to those who knew him.

While not quick to anger, he didn't hesitate to voice his

opinion if he thought he'd been slighted: he let Wolf

have it over the Jaylib bootleg; he chewed Egon out for

inadvertently letting it slip to someone outside the circle

that he was hospitalized; he almost came to blows with

House Shoes over a crate of records, prompting him to

slide a diss into his verse on the Jaylib song "Strapped."

"If you was really fucking with Jay, it wasn't always

a bed of roses," said Shoes. "We'd be in the studio and

there'd be like some hoe-ass business shit going on that

he'd be upset about, and then somebody completely

unrelated to that would call and he would just go in on a

motherfucker."

Even Ma Dukes could acknowledge her son was not

without his moments: "He got stronger, I guess from

the knocks of coming along in [the music industry],

and he became just outright belligerent at times. He

never backed down … we would get neck and neck

sometimes."

With Egon and Wolf not looking to press their luck,

there was one person left on the label side to act as

liaison and guide the project.

"I never had my chance to get on his bad side, so

I became the exec[utive] producer," said Jank. "The

process from [there] was, which other music to include to make it longer—without changing what we loved

about the original—and a process of editing, mastering,

and whatnot. This happened entirely when Dilla was at

Cedars."

There were business concerns as well. Stones Throw

was a small label, but they wanted to figure out a means

to ensure Dilla was properly compensated. So, in the

sort of move that could only fly somewhere like Stones

Throw, they worked out a deal where the label would

retain the product of Donuts the album as an asset, but

Dilla was still free to take the beats contained therein and

shop them to other artists.

"It was a very open-ended deal, you know," said Egon,

"it was meant to say … you're a working musician, we

will market a beat tape for you. You can sell the beats,

you can do whatever you want, and we're just going to

put this out, because we believe in you."

If anything, Donuts emerged as a sort of unanticipated

side project. The primary focus was The Shining, his

follow-up to Welcome 2 Detroit on BBE, most of which

was completed in 2004. Trying to chart an accurate

chronology for the music of that time is difficult at best;

when a man is known for building beats in 15 minutes,

and is consistently ahead of the curve, keeping it all

straight becomes nigh impossible. Jank remembered

going to meet Dilla once and having him hand over

a disc with seven new beats on it that would end up

comprising the last half of Donuts. Whether they were

newly created, or older works he thought fit the mood of

the album, is unclear.

"He was always concerned with getting out the beats

he'd made in 2002 and 2003 which still seemed new. Like that MED beat [2005's 'Push'], he probably made that

beat in 2001," said Egon.

Even though they weren't working on anything

official, the spiritual connection between Dilla and

Madlib continued as well. During one hospital visit, Jank

brought Dilla a copy of The Further Adventures of Lord

Quas, by Madlib's helium-voiced alter ego Quasimoto.

"He asked me on the spot if I'd do the cover for The

Shining, 'with some of this Quasimoto type shit.' So I

originally planned to have those two albums linked in

some way. I put Dilla on the cover of Further Adventures and drew a foldout that would match a foldout for The

Shining. But that ended up going into Donuts." Indeed,

when placed together, the interior art of both albums line

up to form two blocks of a slightly surreal Los Angeles,

from the crowds flowing out of "Dilla's Donuts," down

the street from the chain-smoking aardvark, Quasimoto

himself, checking out the Blaxploitation flicks being

shown at the Pussycat Theatre.

Jank recalled, "It's incredible to think about now, but

he had this crazy full-face mask at the hospital for some

procedure, and he wanted a photo of that on his album

cover [for The Shining]. I took a picture of it!"

It was a difficult time. Dilla's kidney function had

dropped significantly; dialysis became a regular part of

his life, three times a week. Long periods spent sedentary

in a hospital bed weakened his legs; he would get

around with a walker or cane, sometimes a wheelchair.

The diagnosis of lupus came just before his thirty-first

birthday in 2005. But he refused to be limited by his

condition. Dr. Aron Bick, Dilla's hematologist in L.A.,

told the Detroit Free Press, "He didn't want to be a professional patient. The treatment was difficult because

he would not want to go to the hospital. He was very

intelligent. He said, 'I hear you, doc. But here are my

decisions about my own life.'

"I admired that on a human level. He got the medical

care he needed. He really did not let his medical situation

handicap his life. To him, life came first. He made peace

with himself before we even knew it." "He really did not let his medical situation

handicap his life. To him, life came first. He made peace

with himself before we even knew it." – J Dilla's hematologist at Cedars-Sinai

When Madlib and photographer/filmmaker Brian

"B+" Cross offered him an invitation to tag along on

their trip to a film festival in Brazil, Dilla enthusiastically

accepted, even if it quickly became apparent his body

wasn't up for it.

"[H]e was just hype, 'Hell yeah, I wanna do it.' But we

didn't realize how sick he was," said Cross. "So we picked

him up from the house and I noticed when we took him

out to the car he looked kind of bent over a bit and he

looked very weak … [We realized] he was far too weak

to be traveling. He shouldn't have been traveling. Put his

life in danger basically."

Dilla made it through three days on the trip, seeing

the sights and digging for records before he had to be

flown back to L.A. on an ambulance flight to Cedars-Sinai. "His hand swelled up like—Madlib called it the

'Hulk hand'—his hand just swelled the fuck up. Like he

was really in pain and … he locked himself in the hotel

room," said Egon.

His sudden and unexpected return to L.A. derailed

another reason for the trip: Stones Thrown had asked B+

to snap some photos for the cover of Donuts. Back in the

hospital, and in his current condition, taking new photos

wasn't an option, and the label already went through what photos they had promoting Jaylib. So Jank reached

out to Andrew Gura, a Los Angeles-based video director

who had done the clip for MED's Dilla-produced song

"Push." In the long tradition of hip-hop videos but a rare

move for him, Dilla made a cameo appearance, so Jank

asked Gura if there were any stills from the shoot that

could be used. He sent back three, including one of Dilla

with his head in a downward tilt, laughing at a joke he

and MED cracked moments before, his face half-covered

by a Detroit Tigers fitted cap. It was a compromise to

circumstance, now considered by many to be an iconic

image.

Stones Throw's mandate for the album is clear in the

rest of the cover's design: remind the public of who he

was. It uses both the "J Dilla" and "Jay Dee" monikers,

and (on early pressings) included a one-sentence rundown

of his notable collaborations, as well as quotes extolling

his greatness from the biggest hit makers of the time,

Pharrell Williams and Kanye West.

By October 2005, Donuts was ready for release, but

Stones Throw hit a roadblock in their supply chain.

Their distributor, EMI, didn't think a weird, difficult

instrumental album by an underground producer would

move the projected 10,000 copies.

"That wasn't just some loser at EMI, that was like

people that we respected, that believed in Stones Throw

… and they were like, 'It ain't gonna happen,'" said

Egon. "You know to be fair to them, Champion Sound had flopped … it had just absolutely and utterly flopped.

For a company like Stones Throw, that was next to

disastrous." Coming to an agreement with the distributor

pushed the album's release back to early 2006.

With the album finished, Dilla was already looking

to his next move, one few could have predicted. In early

December 2005 he boarded a plane and flew overseas

for a short series of European dates with Frank-n-Dank

and Phat Kat. His health had deteriorated so much he

had to travel confined to a wheelchair, but he refused to

allow a silly thing like standing prevent him from rocking

a crowd, performing songs from Welcome 2 Detroit and Champion Sound while in the chair. As reports and photos

began to circulate, the public received a rare glimpse at

the effects his illness had wrought.

"For somebody who was so concerned with keeping

his health kind of to himself, or keeping it a secret, I

was really surprised that he did that. It showed so much

character," said Wolf.

For Dilla, the trip to Europe was a chance, in some

ways, to close a circle, to see the world with friends old

and new (Ma Dukes, Rhettmatic of the Beat Junkies,

and Dave NewYork accompanied him on the trip) and

perform for crowds that had always supported him.

"It was like his farewell tour. It was postponed like

twice, and he was the one who wanted to do it," said Phat

Kat. "We did that because that's what Dilla wanted to do

… and in between, you know, days we had off, he'd go on

dialysis. I mean, this nigga was a fucking soldier. Still up

there every motherfuckin night, spittin. There wasn't no

night where he was like, 'Yo, I can't do this,' and even if

he had done that, motherfuckas would have understood

that. But this dude rocked every night. He was making

beats in the hotel room while we were over there."

Having come to an understanding with their

distributor, Donuts was set for release in early February,

2006. Stones Throw also pressed up a bonus for some

retailers, a seven-inch single of "Signs," a beat made at

the same time as the Donuts batches but never intended

for inclusion on the album. There was excitement to

finally see the project through to completion, but it was

tinged with melancholy.

Questlove swung through to visit in January 2006,

during Grammy week. Even he wasn't fully aware of just

how sharply Dilla's health had declined. "When I stepped into his house in California, I was totally unprepared for

what I saw. It was just Dilla and his mother, and it really

wasn't Dilla at all. In his place was a frail, eighty-pound

man in a wheelchair. He couldn't communicate at all. He

was mumbling and gesturing weakly … all I knew at the

time was what I saw, which was that he was dying."





J Dilla's Donuts 33 1/3 by Jordan Ferguson was published by Bloomsbury.