J Dilla

Dilla's best work is exhilarating and disorienting. Drums stutter and jerk; sirens wail nonstop; and snippets of wiry noise snake in and out of the mix. It is aggro psychedelic hip-hop that grabs you, sinks its hooks into you and won't let go. This album, overseen by his mother and mixed by Pete Rock, is probably Dilla's best posthumous release to date, touching on everything from the alien orgy funk of his mid-period work to the haunting soul of later years. Raekwon and Black Thought drop by, but the star is Dilla's gleefully idiosyncratic production work.

Before he died in 2006, James "J Dilla" Yancey built an alternately immediate and arty sound
— a mix of busy drumbeats, melodic keyboards and finely chopped samples — that made
him Pharrell Williams' favorite beatmaker. This collection of unreleased material is uneven,
tossing in undercooked instrumentals alongside tracks with MCs like Black Thought. But
cuts such as "On Stilts" ride simple, effective hooks, and Yancey's taste for soun... More >