Product Description
2/LP and CD digipack with the "Smile" photo album cover. Vinyl purchase comes with immediate digital download. Donuts began simply enough as an idea to turn a particularly good demo beat tape into a full-length release, and has since became a classic hip-hop album, one of the defining works of the artist's life. Completed during a year in which J Dilla spent mostly in a hospital bed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Donuts would gain particular poignancy when, only three days after it's release, February 10, 2006, the artist passed away, losing his battle with a rare blood disease. Announced in Fall 2005, the concept of a “rap album without rappers” struck some as minor novelty, but Donuts would prove to transcend the rigid definitions of what a hip-hop album could be. It plays part like a DJ mix, part like a hip-hop beat maker at work, its songs starting and stopping unexpectedly, like someone turning the dial on an imaginary radio station. But it's an unmistakably modern album, and one which perfectly encapsulated the artist's reputation among his peers and fans as a top-rated architect of soulful hip-hop.
Amazon.com
Tragically, Donuts was released just three days before J Dilla (aka Jay Dee) passed away from complications arising from lupus--he was only 32. As one of his last projects, though, Donuts is a fitting reflection of Dilla's creativity and an apt tribute (however unintentional) to a career spent as the quintissential producer's producer. Unlike some of Dilla's previous instrumental albums, such as Welcome To Detroit, the songs here are less finished and polished pieces and more caught up in mid-creative motion. Unlike the soft, filtered sound he was known for in the mid-1990s, for Donuts he leaves a variety of soul and jazz loops in plain view but splices and reworks them as a set of sonic jigsaw puzzles. Spontaneous but not sloppy, the capture the late producer at his best--in the throes of his own imagination, each song poised with endless possibilities. --Oliver Wang
Review
"Dilla is a drum god. His drums can't ever be topped." -- Kanye West-Scratch Magazine
"My favorite producer? J Dilla... Jay Dee, he's bringing it strong." -- Pharrell Williams-BET
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