ROT2000: Donuts

"We should all be so lucky to produce something this moving in the face of our own mortality."

-Nate Patrin [L&R]

To say something that hasn't been said about Donuts by J Dilla, aka Jay Dee aka James Dewitt Yancey, is impossible at this point. Tributes to the man abound and, as someone who discovered him after his death, I'm quite late to the party.

But those facts don't negate the emotional impact of Donuts, Jay Dilla's death-bed opus. He made the album in a hospital, subsisting primarily on brownie sundaes, 15 different medications, and his mother's love. The album is lean, a mere 44 minutes divided amongst 32 tracks, many of which weigh in around 60-90 seconds. Donuts fires at a bewildering clip. Each bullet is an amalgum of soul samples, mid-tempo breaks, that ubiquitous hip-hop siren, and too many head scratch-inducing death references to be ignored. Some times Dillas warps his source material beyond recognition. Other times he drops samples with nary a scatch. The result is a naked piece of art that feels equally complete and a total mess.

On the haunting and confronting "Stop," which lifts Dione Warwick's "You're Gonna Need Me," Dilla pulls some studio tricks, adding a stoccato rest here, some Jadakiss vocal riffs there. But before the goose pimples melt, the slow congas of "People" drop and gain intensity for 60 seconds until the coda "Hold on, my people" takes over. But only for a moment. Then the congas quit as the horn lead-in of "The Diff'rence" barges in and relief is provided by the over-looped piano melody. This is the sound of Donuts. It's the montaged moments of a genius' life culled from hip-hop and r&b vinyls. In turn, these montages are layered with the surreal sounds of beautiful nightmares and poignant dreams.

None of the songs reach the end of their respective evolutions. With so many sketches coming in such rapid succession, it's understandable for a listener to be overwhelmed or even bored by Donuts. But the bite-sized character of the songs--with the way they drop in and cut out--imply a music producer's stream of conscious, the way he/she might envision one melody in their brain before immediately envisioning another. It's as if Donuts is meant to be a time capsule of Dilla's creative process. Fitting that it would be released just three days before he left this earth.

Roots drummer/producer ?uestlove compares J Dilla's work in hip-hop to that of Charlie Parker's in jazz. That is to say, J Dilla is a raw, relentless genius who couldn't help but innovate. But as an individual work, Donuts recalls the iconic chess scene of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Dilla closes the album with Motherlode singing "Be" over and over again. It's hard not to hear as a command. Be. Exist. Do. Live. Even as your body disintegrates in a hospital. Especially as your body disintegrates in a hospital.  Donuts is not just the surreal vision of a hip-hop producer's life flashing before his eyes, it's the sound of an artist courting death on his own terms. Rest in peace, Jay Dee. You didn't go out like no punk.