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J Dilla’s Influence on

Modern Drumming
A research based on groove

by

Nello Biasini 214650

Thesis for the Bachelor Program


in
Pop Drums

Thesis Coordinator Main Subject Teacher


Marijke Tielenius Kruijthoff Hans Eijkenaar
Martijn Vink


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Table of Contents

1. Introduction 4

2. James Dewitt Yancey a.k.a. Jay Dee a.k.a. J Dilla 6

3. The Dilla Beats 11

4. J Dilla’s Influence on Modern Drumming 17

• “Funky Drummers” 21

• Questlove and The Soulquarians 22

• Contemporary Dilla: floor to the drummers 30

5. Conclusions 39

6. Sources 53

• Bibliography

• Web References

• Discography 55

• Videography


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Introduction

In past few years, I’ve developed a strong interest in hip hop and sample based music.

I’ve started diggin’ into it, through artists like The Roots, Common, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, A

Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Pete Rock, DJ Premiere and many others; but only one

really aroused a huge interest in me and the willing to discover more about his world and his

way of making music: James Yancee, also known as Jay Dee or J Dilla.

I heard him for the first time four or five years ago, thanks to a dear friend of mine who I

used to hang out with to listen to music after the lessons, and the first track I’ve heard from

him was “So Far To Go”, 6th song of his record The Shining1; and I remember that at the first

play I definitely got crazy by listening this “unknown D’Angelo and Common track”: I was

blown away by the depth and intricacies of what I heard, each piece had both a distinctive

quality, and a personality that showed through and moved beyond the genre.

After that day I’ve started looking for more of his music and then a world opened up: first

all his solo works, then Slum Village, and only in the end I got back to albums I’ve used to

listen like Mama’s Gun by Erykah Badu or Voodoo by D’Angelo, after discovering that he has

been the producer of lots of tracks on these albums. Since then my love for Dilla and his

works is undebatable, and that love made me approach drums in a different way trying to

understand what was that wobbly feel I had while listening to his joints. I think that’s the same

passion for his music that moved and inspired, especially after his passing, lots of

contemporary artists in every music genres.

Taking into consideration the huge influence he had over the musicians of the past

decade, I’ve focused my research on

HOW HE INFLUENCED MODERN DRUMMING

particularly in hip hop but also in different music genres I’ve been really influenced from.

I wanted to explain in which way and how, modern drummers got influenced by his works

and his way of making music.

1 Released by BBE Records after Yancey’s death on August 22, 2006.


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To reach my goal I had to involve some other sub questions:

• Who is J Dilla?
I went through his life and career, to better understand his figure and his art; trying to

define why he is an innovator. I’ve analysed different tracks from him and defined what is a

“Dilla beat”, the core of his influence on drummers.

• What were his influences? What was before him and connected to his music,
drumming wise?

Then I’ve started analysing his influences, going through the funk drummers from the 60s

and 70s, who managed to play with a feel in between straight and shuffled. So I’ve also

transcribed these groove, analysed the audio waveform and converted it in midi to

understand where the notes are over a grid.

• What happened after him?


To answer to this question I took few modern drummers, (Questlove, Chris Dave, Perrin

Moss, Mike Colenburg, Richard Spaven) analysed their grooves, transcribed them and put

the waveform or the midi over a grid to understand where they put the note, the put

emphasis on how this feel was strictly linked to Dilla.

My research process was all about listening to a lot of hip hop, nu soul and jazz records,

transcribing grooves and beats and, then, analysing them through Ableton, in order to have

the transients of the hits to get a clearer understanding on the position of the notes within

that particular swing feel he created. I’ve looked for as many different kind of sources: books

about hip hop music, biographies, researches, interviews and articles (in magazines and

dedicated hip hop magazines), watched a lot of lectures and documentaries about him and

his music; and because of a lack of sources on my specific topic, I’ve also interviewed

several drummers and producers who have been influenced by Dilla, like Mark Colenburg,

Robert “Sput” Searight, Richard Spaven, Christian Meyer and Michele Manzo.

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James Dewitt Yancey a.k.a. Jay Dee a.k.a. J Dilla

Known as one of the best and most influential producers in hip hop/soul music, in over 10

years he managed to produce GRAMMY award-winning songs, thousands of recorded

material and create a new personal sound that changed hip hop and soul music history

forever.

James Dewitt Yancey was born and raised in the east side of Detroit on February 7th,

1974. He was the eldest of four children (including his sister Martha and two brothers, Earl

and John) and son of a jazz double bass player, vocalist and 25 year recording and

performance veteran (mr. Beverly Yancey) and a classical and opera music enthusiast (mrs.

Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey); the music lineage of his family was that strong that is easy to

understand why he started to be surrounded by music as soon he came to the world.

“Jazz was the music he grew up with and was raised on. Since he was a couple of months

old, he wouldn’t go to sleep unless he heard jazz, so my husband had to sing and play for

him to go to sleep. It was his lullaby music as a child in his nursery.”2

Already from his two years old his life was all about music: in an interview for NPR.org, his

mother says that "Dilla's interest in music started at age 2: Dilla carried 45s on his arm and

turntables to the park every day, to spin records — and this was in downtown Detroit." 3. His

first music training came from piano and cello, from singing in the Vernon Chapel AME choir

(his mother sent him to church to keep him out of the harms of the neighbourhood); he

graduated at the Farwell Middle School and then his mother enrolled him at the Davis

Aerospace Technical High School, but his only interested was music4 . In that period (late

80s) he started his first music collaboration with Joseph “AMP” Fiddler, keyboardist and

producer best known for touring with George Clinton & the Funkadelic Parliament, who

welcomed him in his home studio (Camp Amp, at walking distance from Dilla’s house) and

2 Quotation of Maureen Yancey, J-Dilla’s Biography, http://www.j-dilla.com/biography/

3 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5205096

4 His mother said “He didn’t want to be at Davis, but he was just excellent at physics, so I thought that maybe he would
warm up to it, but he was interested in music. He ended up practically turning Davis into a dance hall, because every
time I turned around he was going to DJ some party.” http://www.j-dilla.com/biography/
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taught him the art behind of being the desk. He used to spend whole nights in the studio with

Fiddler, learning sampling techniques, getting to know how to work in a studio and, of course,

digging in Amp’s huge vinyl collection. Under his guide, James got really fast and easy how

to use the instrument that became his signature: the sampler and drum machine, Akai MPC.

“He learned the sampler real quick: I showed him how to quantize, how to freak shit, how

to change the time signature, make the feel different, make it fall ahead or behind the beat…

He loved that.” (J. “Amp” Fiddler).

In that period Dilla started to meet new people involved in music that were also regulars at

Camp Amp, such as Ronnie Watts (aka Phat Kat), Humberto Andres Hernandez (aka DJ

Dez) and two of the future members of his first band: R.L. Altaman (T3) and Titus Glover

(Baatin), both rappers, both neighbours and classmates at the Detroit Pershing High School

where Dilla transferred for his senior school year. It’s interesting how the relationship

between the three of them started as a competition for the neighbourhood’s MC supremacy;

at that time T3 and Glover were in a group and Dilla was in another one with one of his

lifetime friend Frank Bush.

“Jay Dee wanted to challenge us in rapping. He was like, ‘I can beat both of ya’ll.’” 5

But, throughout their many rap battles, all this competition turned into a mutual respect of

their talents, and that brought Dilla to form his first band with Altaman and Baatin: Ssenepod,

that started to get through Detroit’s underground hip hop scene and then changed name in

Slum Village. The music they were making was ground breaking, that’s why R.J. Rice (a

really active person in Detroit’s music scene) didn’t wait so much to let them sign with his

management company; he also gave a studio to Dilla to further his training.6 Even though

now Dilla was under R J’s wing, Fiddler was still willing to help him reaching success and

that’s why, in 1994, he introduced him to Q-Tip, from A Tribe Called Quest, to whom he

showed his Slum Village sound. That’s a turning point for Yancey’s career: under Q-Tip’s

5 Said Glover (aka Baatin, Yancey’s mate in Slum Village) to Reese in 2006.

6 As Fiddler, Rice noticed the incredible talent of J Dilla and wanted to support it as much as possible.
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direction he started doing credited and uncredited work for artists such as Janet Jackson,

Busta Rhymes, De La Soul, and The Pharcyde. But it still was something that kept Dilla

“hidden” behind the desk and the first thing that made him shine as a hip hop young talent,

was the first creation of Slum Village: Fantastic, Vol 1 in 19977; this record set the debut of J

Dilla in the underground hip hop scene of Detroit. The word was spreading all over the place:

hardcore hip-hop fans began to know Dilla for his steady wobble, shuffling hi-hats, oddly

placed handclaps, spacious drum loops with drastically reshaped samples of tracks both

obscure and obvious. Yancey’s reputation among his peers was growing in spades and there

were great work expectations for him; but Slum Village was still a priority for him: in 2000

Fantastic Vol. 2 and Best Kept Secret (credited to J-88, a Slum Village’s pseudonym) came

out really close to each other but with the time he only produced few songs because of his

schedule getting busier and busier.

The 00s were the shiniest part of Yancey’s career, earlier he funded (with Ahmir

“Questlove” Thompson, D’Angelo and James Poyser) the Soulquarians, a nu soul/alternative

hip hop collective that included and produced artists like Common, De La Soul, Erykah Badu,

Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Bilal, James Poyser, and Jill Scott, working on records like D’Angelo’s

“Voodoo”, Badu’s “Mama’s Gun”, Common’s “Like Water for Chocolate” and Talib Kweli’s

“Quality”.

In 2001 he earned two Grammy nominations for Common’s “The Light” (Best Rap Solo

Performance) and Erykah Badu’s “Didn’t Cha Know” (R&B Song of the Year) and he started

officially his solo career by releasing Welcome 2 Detroit 8 in which there’s the single “F The

Police” that became one of his most popular songs.

in 2002 he released another solo work called Ruff Draft EP, published by his own label

(Mummy Records) and distributed by Groove Attack, a german label; in this album compares

for the first time, the name Jaylib in the liner notes, the group that Dilla and Madlib would

7This record was only recorded in between 1996 and 1997 and only published 8 years later. But the Slum Village sound
of Fantastic Vol 1., was nonetheless leaked onto the underground circuit and caused “quite a stir” in 1997. The whole
album was produced by J Dilla.

8 2001, BBE Records


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have formed a couple of weeks later the release of this EP and that would have released an

album in 2003: Champion Sound, the only studio work from this duo. Half of the songs are

produced by Madlib and feature J Dilla on vocals, and the other half are the other way

around.

2003 is a very important year in Yancey’s career: it marks the beginning of his touring

performing career, in fact he had different tours in Europe and USA, but he also got sick: a

trip to the emergency room revealed thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), a rare

blood condition. Despite his condition he kept on producing and later, in 2004, he moved to

Los Angeles9 where he found his roots again (one such effort was his work on mentor Amp

Fiddler’s Waltz of a Ghetto Fly, and another, his interpretation of Jack McDuff’s “Oblighetto”

for the Blue Note Revisited LP).

“The Blue Note remix was something he was proud of. It touched something deep in him

because it was in a different vein, and it was also the music he grew up with [jazz]. It was his

lullaby music as a child when he went to sleep in his nursery, so it meant a great deal to him.

He probably got more out of that than any gold or platinum plaque.” 10

In the same year his health condition got worse and he was also diagnosed with lupus, a

disease that makes the immune system attack healthy tissues; that brought him to a kidneys

failure and, because of that, he had to be under dialysis treatment for two years. Of course is

work output slowed down in this period but in 2005 he worked on Dollar from Steve Spacek

and on Love Is and It’s your world by Common, which are remarkable productions. But even

that didn’t stop him to be close to his fans, producing and touring: for a few weeks from

November to December, he toured Europe on a wheelchair with Frank-N-Dank, DJ

Rhettmatic, his mother, and friend and confidant Dave “New York” Tobman. Frank-n-Dank,

Dilla’s friend for his entire life, said:

9He was already collaborating with lots of L.A. producers and artists and he decided to move when he had to work again
with Common.

10 Maureen Yancey, J Dilla’s Biography by Ronnie Reese (2006)


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“He wasn’t supposed to go but he said, ‘You know what? I’m going to do it…I’m going to

go and rock in a wheelchair.’ It was like this was going to be the last time for him and his

niggas to bring this shit full circle.” 11

After this tour he spent his last months producing his last work Donuts, which is “[…]just a

compilation of the stuff I thought was a little too much for the MCs.[…]”12, during one of his

extended hospitalisation at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre of L.A.; releasing it on his

birthday, just three days before passing away, on February 10 2006.

Six months later The Shining was released after final producing from Karriem Higgins.

11 Frank Bush, J Dilla’s Biography by Ronnie Reese (2006)

12 said J Dilla as reported by Alvin Blanco, J Dilla: still Lives Through, Scratch Magazine, May/June 2006
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The Dilla Beats

“The stuff he has done with Badu, Common, Kayne West, Q-Tip, Slum Village, you know,

all his soul stuff, was ground breaking music man! […] His production method, his inner ear

was unlike any other producer ever” 13

After his death, J Dilla became even more popular and his work started to be so well

considered that he left a true legacy. But what did he exactly do? Let’s go back a little.

Hip hop music evolution happened following the new technologies of each era this genre

went through: everything started with turntables, with their “cuts” and “break” made by

spinning around the cross fader; then drum machines (that started to be used together with

the turntables) and, last but not least, the sampler. This device, with its evolution, changed

the sound of hip hop productions.

“The reason why rap changed its sound so dramatically in the latter half of the ‘80s was

due to the development of relatively low priced digital samplers with enough memory to hold

and loop a few bars of music. By the ‘90s, these samplers could run multiple loops of long or

short sections of music simultaneously, along with drum sound samples and other noises, all

of which could then be saved onto floppy disc to be kept as the producer’s personal library of

signatures. This was a massive progression from Grandmaster Flash cutting up “Adventures

on the Wheels of Steel” in the studio, or Jam Master Jay running one section of Bob James’

“Mardi Gras” under a drum machine beat.” 14

The first drum machine/sampler hybrid was the E-Mu SP-1200, released in 1987 by E-Mu

Systems, Inc. it immediately became the Fender Stratocaster (or the Stradivari) of hip hop’s

golden age: the artists could build up the bulk of a song within one piece of portable gear,

13Quote of DJ Spinna from YouTube video J Dilla’s Vynil Collection - Crate Diggers)

14 David Toop, Rap Attack 2, 2 ed. (New York: Serpent’s Tail, 1991), 191
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reduce production costs and increase creativity, by recording and manipulating samples up to

10.7 seconds lenght.

Because of the success of this machine, it didn’t took any longer for other companies to

build their own improved version of the SP-1200, and AKAI, in collaboration with Roger Linn,

jumped in the game with a poker of aces: the MPC60, drum machine and sampler that made

hip hop’s history from its first release in 1988 until nowadays.

“I used the MPC60 on Soul Survivor II. That was kind of the beginning of using it. I thought

it had a thinner sound than the SP, but it had way more sample time—like three minutes. So,

can't beat that.” 15

The MPC was really embraced by every hip hop artist because it was like having one

turntable per pad: it is a sampler so, once a sound is sampled, it can be trimmed to various

lengths, chopped up into discrete regions, and/or assigned to any of the sixteen rubber pads

on the front interface for “live” playback, the sample becomes its own instrument. It also has

a built-in sequencer: the user can record and overdub any number of pad performances,

juxtaposing and layering as many tracks as the limited memory (a single 1.44 mb floppy disk)

would allow. This machine also gave producers and artists the chance of directly

manipulating the breakbeat, thanks to the possibility of chopping it in discrete regions

assignable to every pad; that also brought to a “re-humanization” of drum machine: hip hop

producers could directly play their beats using non synthesised sounds, adding variations

and even fills on existing drumbeats.

With the evolution of this machine, came out more and more opportunities, for the artists

and producers, especially talking about sample lengths and layering possibilities (stacking

different samples, one on another, to modify the sound of that sample16). Learning how to

use this new instrument was also really easy but, as Dj Houseshoes says,

15 as Pete Rock said in 2007 in The Dirty Heartbeat of Golden Age,

16 Technique especially used for making new drums sounds.


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“Nobody could do what [Jay] did. But he could do what everybody else could, pretty much

better than them.”17

Dilla’s MPC skills where out of the world, Phat Kat recalls that Dilla was very fast: “he

would choose a sample from his record collection, put his headphones on, ’chop it‘ onto his

MPC 2000XL, and ten minutes later, the beat would be ready for the rap” (Watts 2014).

But what’s really important about MPC’s birth? It’s for sure the coming back to a

percussive nature for hip hop, particularly in the music making progress; from the turntable to

the pads, from sliding to hitting: that could sound insignificant but it moved hip hop into a

more percussive approach to music that is, without any doubt, what brought J Dilla to build

up the core of his sound, his drum beats.

In fact after his death, the one thing that most people latched onto was his sense of swing,

his funk, the way he drummed: he managed to make the MPC sound human. When you

listen to his beats (of course this perception is certainly subjective) you can feel imperfection

and a “woobly”, odd kind of swing. But how did he managed to do that?

Let’s listen to one of his early works with Slum Village: 1997, Fan-ta-stic Vol. 1 18 was

produced and we already recognise his sound; let’s listen to Fat Cat Song, 5th track of the

album. Since the fill that introduces the groove (min 00.16) we feel something different,

something really strong and tight in his own way that is, at a first listening, really weird. The

groove is jumping, has a percentage of shuffle that’s exactly in between playing straight and

shuffling completely.

To understand this strange wobbly feeling better let’s analyse the beat of another Slum

Village song from their second album Fantastic Vol. 2 (2000): CB4. We are at 94,60 bpm and

the groove is based on a 8th notes hi hat pattern, with back beat on 2 and 4 and kick drum

on the downbeat of 1, downbeat and up beat of 3 and on the last 16th note of 4. The easiest

way to write it down would it be the one shown in Figure 1 (see Fig. 1, next page).

17 DJ Houseshoes, in an extract of All Ears documentary by Gus Sutherland

18 This record was produced and recorded in 1997 by J Dilla in his own home studio but was only published in 2005 by
the label Counterflow. It leaked in the underground Detroit hip hop scene straight after it was made and some of these
tracks were re elaborated and used for Slum Village’s second album: Fantastic, Vol. 2 (2000).
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As you can see everything looks “normal” but if we listen to the track we can notice that

this kind of writing doesn’t really correspond to what it is actually played: let’s have a look at

the waveform of this beat, putting it on a 16th notes grid (see Fig. 2).

Figure 2: Stereo waveform of CB4’s beat over a 16th notes grid

As we can see in this image, the only hits that are really on the count, are the kick hits on

the 1 and on the 3 and the snare is always slightly before the 2 and 4. The second hi hat

eight note is lightly after the upbeat (so is the kick on the upbeat of 3) and the last kick hit is

really out of the 16th notes grid, being really close to the one of the next measure.

We can take an even clearer example of this “exaggerated” swing from J Dilla’s record

The Shining19, by listening the drum intro of E=MC2 (a track based on a Giorgio Moroder

sample20 ), second song of the record.

Figure 3: Drum notation of E=MC2’s drum

If we take a look at the waveform of this beat we already notice that some peaks are

slightly before or after the count (see Fig. 4):

19Released by BBE Records after Yancey’s death on August 22, 2006. Discounting the instrumental album Donuts, The
Shining was the first full-length solo release by J Dilla (featuring vocals) five years after Welcome 2 Detroit.

from the record E=MC2 (1979), by Giorgio Moroder italian producer, who was one of the pioneer of electronic based
20

music.
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Figure 4: Mono waveform of E=MC2’s intro beat on a 16th

Using the same grid of 1/16 (the tempo is around 95.65 bpm), we can see how the

transients (audio peaks, highlighted with a yellow mark on the top bar) of the waveform are

not on the count. In the following picture (figure 5) we have a MIDI representation of the beat

that helps us understand the hits position in relation with the count and with them selves.

Figure 5: Ableton MIDI Clip view of E=MC2’s drum intro groove

This groove is the perfect demonstration of a Dilla beat: the hi hat is really swinging, while

keeping a steady rhythm; the snare is always a little bit early on the count and the kick hits

are floating all over the place. That’s one of the most copied and inspiring characteristics of J

Dilla: his interpretation of time, groove and feel; an interpretation that for somebody could
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sound “wobbly” or “unstable” but that “It’s solid… It’s just a feel. If you nod your head to it

then you get it”21, or as Mark Colenburg says “I would describe Dilla’s groove more

accurately as being organic”22 .

But how did he get this solidity, this organic grooves? According to D’Errico, non

quantization and compressors have a key role on the bounciness of this grooves, working on

two different sides of the same coin.

As he says, compressors “place value on opacity and take up space both visually and

aurally, reflecting the music’s origins as primarily public, collective, and literally loud”23 :

chopping samples leaded to portions of songs that some how where disconnected from each

other and the use of effects like compressors (by boosting its threshold, as well as adjusting

the ratio, attack, and release levels) gave the music his flow and an aggressively dynamic

ebb but also it worked on the feeling of the pulse that we receive. In her book Musical

Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction, Anne Danielsen claims that heavy use of

compression, creates a musical complexity at a “microrhythmic” level, focusing on “timbral

and dynamic aspects of rhythm”24 and that shapes our perception of the rhythm.

But while compressors work on the dynamic aspect of the groove, the non use (or the

higher precision in quantization brought by new technologies) of rhythmic quantization alters

the structure of the groove on a “metrical dissonant” level.

That’s why when we analyze waveforms and beats on a MIDI Clip view over a grid (as we

did in figures 2, 4 and 5) we have hits displaced. And these are only few basic characteristics

of Dilla’s beats; now let’s get into how he manage to create them.

21 As Richard Spaven (Josè James, Flying Lotus) answered me in an interview for this research (2015)

22 Mark Colenburg (Robert Glasper) about describing Dilla’s groove in an interview I’ve done for this research (2015)

23 Mike D’Errico, Behind the Beat: Technical and Practical Aspects of Instrumental Hip-Hop Composition (2011)

24Anne Danielsen, “Chapter 1: Introduction: Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” in Musical Rhythm in the Age of
Digital Reproduction (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 9.

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J Dilla’s influences

As I said, thanks to the invention of machines like the MPCs, sampling from records is,

without any doubt, the most used technique in hip hop music, and it’s a technique that

became known (and popular) after it’s birth. In the beginning of hip hop music all the attention

was on the MC: the lyrics and the rapping were the main subject of the audience, and almost

nobody cared about where the kicks and snare came from, the beats where only a

surrounding for the MCs. The first breakout rap singles were played by session musicians

that were playing original compositions or rearrangements of disco hits (emulating the

popular loops and breaks of the upcoming rap scene) and one of these, who can easily be

awarded as the “father” of sampling, is Larry Smith, session bass player from New York and

early partner of future Def Jam Records co-founder Russell Simmons.

Smith had an important role in turning hip hop’s focus into a more percussive melodic

music, rather than melodic; he produced the beat that declared Run-DMC’s success and

that "completely changed hip-hop […] rendering everything that preceded it distinctly old

school with one fell swoop.” 25: “Sucker M.C.’s” (1983). The beat of this song, released on

March 12th, 1983 as B-side of Run-DMC’s single “It’s Like That”, was produced by Larry

Smith just by programming the groove of “Action”, a single of his band Orange Krush, into a

drum machine, that’s why this song (which is basically rap lines over a beat, without any

hook or chorus) became famous also as “Krush Groove 1”. But Smith also started producing

other people and, important to note, it’s the work he did on Whodini’s album Escape (1984)26 ,

where he evolved his Krush Groove.

After Smith, another guy who made a great change in the history of hip hop music is

Marlon “Marley Marl” Williams: by running a sampler through a drum machine, he changed

completely the way of producing music and sampling of his time allowing the use of pre

25 As Peter Shapiro, music journalist, wrote in his “The rough guide to Hip Hop” p. 327/401 (Rough Guides, 2005)

26 Escape, Whodini (1984), Jive/Arista Records


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recorded acoustic drum sounds triggered by the drum machine instead of electronic

instruments.

“I was trying to sample a vocal for chorus and the snare came in accidentally. I started

playing the snare along with the track and it made it sound better; it was like: “Do you know

what I mean?, we can take any drum sound off of any record, manipulate it, make our own

patterns off of it”27

That’s an epic change in how hip hop music was made: all the gear limits where

destroyed leaving space only for one, the creativity of the artist. He also gave more light on

the producers’ role making them artists instead of just a name on the records’ credit lists.

After his solo album In Control 28 (which established Marley as an artist and not only as a

producer) producers went also on stage starting to be behind a mic /turntable etc and not

only behind a desk; but soon this new technique started to stagnate and here it comes Pete

Rock, a producer who started finding new sounds not only in funk music but also in all the

other genres. Deeply influenced by the two guys aforementioned, he managed to find his

own way into different music styles, blending them together in a mix of a drum and bass

based music with the use of more instruments, first of all, horns. His bigger contributions to

hip hop music and sampling were removing the wall between the artist and the producer (in

his production we always listen to his voice, that doesn’t act as a main instrument but as a

support for the artist; giving a live impact to the records) and he indirectly established a

sampling aesthetics (in his works he always puts interludes between tracks that are loops of

jazz and soul records, to honour his crate digging dedication).

“I was trying to be you” 29

That’s what Jay said when he met his main inspiration (Pete Rock), after he gave his

demo to Q-Tip. Pete Rock was his idol, and Larry Smith and Marley Marl were Pete Rock’s

idols; it’s easy to understand how these three guys had a really big influence over Jay Dee:

27Marley Marl in a YouTube video, Introducing Marley Marl ! Howd U Get Started Sampling? BtMkRs.Com, posted by J
Diggiti Jul 13, 2007

28 Marley Marl, In Control (1988), Cold Chillin’/Warner Bros.

29 said Pete Rock in an interview by James Fullerton for Attack + Rebuild, Issue 1 (2012)
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in his production there are lots of recognisable trademarks inspired by these three guys, but

his biggest influence was without any doubt Pete Rock as we can understand by listening to

two elements that has been copied and then made personal by Dilla, the use of “quotation” of

rare jazz and soul records and the displacement of the beat.

But he was an outbreaking man, he broke all the sampling “ethical rules”: he didn’t care of

sampling only from vinyl, he didn’t care of not sampling hip hop records, he didn’t care about

not sampling from a compilation or “staeling” beat from other producers (he took them and

completely changed them); and after him nobody cared about these old rules anymore.

“The biggest thing with Jay was there were no rules, when it started off he used to look for

like a specific line of records but once he broke out of that, that’s when the fuckin’ shit really

got wild”30

Everybody who worked or knew J Dilla, knows that he was always working in his studio,

not always for producing beats to sell but also for practicing (some of them have also been

release by Waajeed’s label Bling47 during 2002 and 2005); he was in a constant challenge

with himself to create new music and sound without caring of any rules, he used to sample

from every kind of physical support, from every record without caring about the genre: his

only rule was “try to make something new and creative”; he also liked to “freak shit that’s

been abused, just 2 see if I can do something different” 31.

To understand better how he creates his beats, it’s nice to quote a story told by Ahmir

Thompson (aka ?uestlove), during on episode of the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon32, about

Dilla making a beat out of Roy Ayers’ song “Ain’t Got No Time”. After realising that wouldn’t

be possible to loop anything directly from the song, Dilla managed to make one by taking all

the moments in which Ayers is not singing/talking and he samples this one/half second

fragments and glues them together into a fluid loop that would have been the eight bar loop

30DJ HouseShoes in Bling47 Dilla Breaks Edition: House Shoes min 3.01, YouTube video (2012)

31 Liner notes of Welcome 2 Detroit (2001), his first solo album published by BBE

32 “Questlove Explains Little Brother’s Beat”, January 3 (2012)


19
(sampled from a beat tape passed to Mos Def and Talib Kweli) of “Little Brother”33. This was

only one of the different techniques he used to create beats, techniques that were against

the hip hop production “ethical rules” but that brought this music to the next level.

“In the beginning of my career, I did a lot of new things. And this guy [Dilla] took it at least

two or three steps higher than me. It was a chain reaction: it was like from Smith to Marley

Marl, from Marley Marl to Pete Rock, from Pete Rock to Jay Dee”34

Song composed in 1999 for the Original SoundTrack of the movie The Hurricane (1999) by Black Star, the rap duo of
33

Mos Def and Talib Kweli

34As Pete Rock said in the YouTube documentary “J Dilla Still Shining (Part 2 of 4)” by Brian “B. Kyle” Atkins min 8.30
20
J Dilla’s Influence on Modern Drumming

In writing this thesis, my goal is to research how Dilla’s work contributed in the developing

of modern drumming language, especially in hip hop but also in other music genres from jazz

to pop music.

“Dilla is a modern genius. Everyone has genius within them, but not everyone, for

whatever reason, manifests it. But Dilla did. He stood for taking a great risk on different

levels, for continuous hard work and for courage. He is a modern genius because he

captured and represented the spirit of a particular time. What he did was so deep that he

influenced a huge amount of modern music. In an age when many of his peers are still more

interested in vanity, Dilla was more interested in exploration through music. And that is why

he is a modern genius” 35

The key to understand his approach, which was revolutionary at that time, is the non

quantization of drums: in an era, after the first computers were born, in which everything was

“loosing humanity” and getting super quantized, he managed to make a machine sound

human.

To get more into this process I’m going to analyse different drummers, beats and records

from the sources Dilla took inspiration, from his own work and from some works that came

after him.

“Some influences… I can say Prince, James Brown, Jet McDuff: these are all people I

grew up listening to in my house […]”36

35 Miguel Atwood-Ferguson quoted by James Fullerton on Attack+Rebuild, Issue 1 (2012)

36 J Dilla interview on Gilles Peterson Worldwide, BBC Radio 1, 15/02/2001


21
“Funky Drummers”

“If we speak about the top echelon of drummers who had an influence on hip hop and modern

music, it comes down to a handful of drummers: Idris, Bernard Purdie, Zigaboo from the Meters,

and James Brown’s drummers like Clyde Stubblefield.” 37

In an article about Dilla in Attack+Rebuild 38, James Fullerton [the author] interviewed

Waajeed (close friend and collaborator of Jay Dee) and he remembers that one day they

spent about one hour listening to the drum break of James Brown’s “Funky Drummer”39 ,

moving the needle back and forth while discussing about Dilla’s theory of non quantization of

the drums. I think that speaking about the influence that the funk/soul drummers had on Dilla

(and on hip hop in general) and analyzing few of them it’s the best starting point to

understand the wobbly feel of his beats.

Funk and soul music has been (and it keeps on being) the most sampled music in hip

hop, since its beginning, and drummers like Clyde Stubblefield and John “Jabo” Starks

(James Brown), Zigaboo Modeliste (The Meters), Bernard Purdie (Aretha Franklin, Marvin

Gaye, Steely Dan, B.B. King) and Idris Muhammad (Curtis Mayfield, Lou Donaldson, John

Scofield, George Benson) have been sampled millions of times and they really changed the

way we play drums today. They were the first musicians that started playing “in between the

cracks” 40, mixing the swing feel (coming from the music they used to listen at that time) and

the straight feel (of new upcoming music).

The first drum groove I’m going to analyze is exactly the one on which, as I said before, J

Dilla and Waajeed spent about an hour: “Funky Drummer” by James Brown.

“We would be in the studio, just sit around, I started with something like that and the bass

player joined in, and the guitar player came in […] We just had a groove and so [James]

37 Vinnie Esparza, San Francisco-based DJ who uses a plethora of soul, jazz, and psychedelic records in his turntablism

38 Issue 1, (2012)

39A song by James Brown (Clyde Stubblefield on drums),recorded in 1969 and released in March 1970 as a part of a
two-part 45 rpm single by King Records.

40 As said by Stanton Moore, former studio drummer and educator, in his drum method Groove Alchemy.
22
Brown come in and says “Let’s make a song out of it” He started singing and we had a song:

nobody planned it!” 41

This song was recorded on November 20th, 1969 in Cincinnati, Ohio and released in

March 1970 as a two-part single by King Records and it consists of a vamp on which organ

and saxophones play licks and the singing part is just declamatory and encouraging words

for the band members. On call (min 5.19 of the full version recording, available in the

compilation album “In the Jungle Groove”, released in 1986 by Polydor Records) there’s

Clyde’s solo, which an 8-bar drum break that has been sampled by thousands of producers;

that comes back as a reprise at min 8.57, slowly fading out.

Through out the whole song, the groove coined by Stubblefield is a masterpiece: even

though is full of small variations, this groove is based on a 16th notes grid punctuated by the

hi-hat, the first kick hit is on the upbeat of 1 and the snare fills with “what they call ghost

notes” 42 the gaps between the accents. Here’s the drum transcription of the basic groove

(see Fig. 6).

Figure 6: drum notation of Funky Drummer’s main groove

As you can see actually the groove seems pretty easy to play, except that it’s really fast

(circa 98 bpm) and tight: the leading voice in this groove is the hi-hat that’s played with

straight sixteenth notes and then we have the movement between kick and snare that gives

the swing to the groove. Let’s take a look at this groove on a 16th notes grid (see fig. 7 next

page).

41Clyde Stubblefield during a clinic in Toronto, Canada (2008) in The Drake Hotel, interviewed by Marley Marl
Source: YouTube video Clyde Stubblefield/ Funky Drummer

42 As Clyde Stubblefield said during a drum clinic in Toronto, Canada (2008)


23
Figure 7: midi converted “Funky Drummer” groove on a 16th note grid

It’s clear how the swung notes on this groove are the snare hits and the kicks on 2nd

sixteenth of 2 and 4, while the straight feel is maintained due to the hi-hat and the kick on the

upbeat of 1 and 3. This groove gradually morph during the songs with the addition of different

variations until min 5.19 when it’s transformed into one of the most sampled breaks of music

history (see figure 8).

Figure 8: drum notation of “Funky Drummer”’s drum break (min 5.19)

The feel of this break is incredible, the left hand is going straight with some slight hi-hat

opening that give a swingy feel to the 16th notes, the snare is swinging as it’s clearly audible

24
from the ghost notes, with particular attention to the ruff played in bar four and eight; also the

way in which Clyde accents the snare helps the swinging the feel to come out. This break,

especially the first bars which are without vocals, has been sampled on 1141 songs43 , from

1986 till nowadays: it made the history of sample based music and influenced J Dilla

because he also used it in Slum Village’s production for 2000 Beyond (2010); he also

sampled some vocals from this track that he used for “Shouts”, 10th song of his third solo

album Ruff Draft (2007)44.

Another interesting tune to understand this half way straight and half way shuffle feeling,

is “My Thang” by James Brown45 , a tune that was also sampled by J Dilla in Track 4046.

This groove in the first verse, played by Jimmy Madison, sounds incredibly modern with

the hi-hat played in quarter notes; it’s about 101 bpm and the only thing that swings is the

kick in the double hit resolving on the 3. Following there are the drum notation and the midi

clip of Ableton (see fig. 9-10).

Figure 9: Drum notation of “My Thang”’s groove

Figure 10: Ableton MIDI clip of “My Thang”’s groove

43 According to whosampled.com, one of the main resources for sample-based music.

44First released as an EP (Feb 2013), by Mummy Records, in 2007, became J Dilla's largest first-week sales as a solo
artist after being remastered and re-released as his third official solo album by Stones Throw Records.

45Recorded in 1974 and first released as a two-side single and later included into Brown’s 41st album Hell published by
Polydor Records

46 According to whosampled.com, contained in a collection of Dilla’s beat tape released in 2005.


25
Dilla used this tune to take multiple samples for his “Track 40” but also took a vocal line for

“Light My Fire”47. This track was also clearly “inspired” by “It’s your thing” by The Isley

Brothers48 , a band that is really close to J Dilla and from which he sampled a lot.

It’s interesting to analyze the groove of “Footsteps In The Dark” 49, another record that has

been sampled quite a lot and that Dilla used for two how his songs: “Bye.” from Donuts and

“Won’t Do” from The Shining; and that’s exactly in this song that he samples the drum intro,

chops it out and plays it at a faster tempo on his MPC.

The original groove in The Isley Brothers’ song goes like this:

Figure 11: Drum notation of “Footsteps in the Dark” groove

The original tempo is about 80 bpm, and the leading voice is the hi-hat pattern played with

two hands, techniques that gives a more open feel to the groove, if we listen to Dilla’s “Won’t

Do”, we can really feel the difference between the original and his own interpretation: even

though the groove is straight (except for some kick that are a little laid back), the wobbly

sensation of the “Dilla beat” is given us by the bass line, which push and pulling the groove,

and the sample that starts at 0.0250, that opens up the beat. With this tune we can also

understand how Yancey’s beats weren’t only focus on the drums but also on the melodic and

harmonic side: his goal was incorporate melody and harmony in the beat to have things

grooving as a whole and not as separate parts.

There are still two other drummer that, in my opinion, influenced modern drumming and

had a key role on how hip hop music is played now, especially because their grooves have

been sampled a lot; and these two guys are Idris Muhammad and Zigaboo Modeliste.

47 4th song of Donuts (2006), it’s possible to hear the sample at 0.08 (and throughout)

48 Single from the album It’s Our Thing, release in 1969 by T-Neck Label.

49 B-Side of the single “Groove with You” from the album Go For Your Guns, released in 1977 by T-Neck Label

50Sampled from another rare record, Alfie by Dick Hyman (The Age of Electronics, 1969). That reminds us of Pete
Rock’s influence on Jay to put samples from rare records.
26
Zigaboo Modeliste was the drummer of the funk band The Meters and he was one of the

first drummers who started played funk grooves on the hi-hat with two hands and that started

playing linear funk phrases before it became popular in the mid 70s; groove like the “Cissy

Strut”, “Oh, Calcutta!” and “Africa” Idris Muhammad, has been the drummer of so many funk,

jazz and soul artists (just to name a few of them: Lou Donaldson, Curtis Mayfield, George

Benson, Roberta Flack etc). and he could be easily named as the most sampled drummer in

hip hop music.

There’s one The Meters’ song that has been covered by Idris Muhammad which is the

best example to show the typical feel of Dilla’s (and, in general, hip hop) music and that

shows how two different drummers had to different version of the same song while keeping a

common feel over it. Let’s start with Zig’s version of “Hey Pocky A-Way”51.

Figure 12: Drum notation of Zigaboo’s groove on “Hey Pocky A-Way”

The tempo is set at about 83 bpm, as Play is pushed, the groove starts to surround you:

the 2nd line drumming influences on Zigaboo is super clear. The kick is playing an ostinato

(based on the rhymthic cell 3+3+2) and the hands are playing a single stroke roll accenting

the New Orleans clave. The feel of this groove is really in between straight and swinging

(even though it’s more on the swing side of the “spectrum”) and we can listen this kind of vibe

even more on Idris Muhammad’s version of this song which, in my opinion, is closer to Dilla’s

hip hop vibe.

Figure 13: Drum notation of Idris’ Muhammad groove on “Hey Pocky A-Way”

51From the album Rejuvenation (1974) published by Reprise Records. Fun fact, the front cover displays a couple of
records, amongst them the Allen Toussaint's 1972 album Life, Love and Faith: kind of a blueprint of the hip hop’s crate
digging aestetichs.
27
Idris Muhammad played this song on his record “House of The Rising Sun” 52 , re-

interpreted Zigaboo’s idea by adding his own characteristic touch: the New Orleans feel is

still going on but the voices of the groove are orchestrated in a different way. He spread the

groove on snare, kick and tambourine (or pandeiro, which is a really common instrument in

New Orleans 2nd line drumming) maintaining Zig’s kick ostinato on the tambourine (and, of

course, adding some variations), adding a steady back beat on 2 and 4 and playing some

variations with the kick. This version is played also slightly slower (circa 78 bpm) and the feel

is more in between straight and swing, compared to The Meters’ version; the groove is

always rolling, especially on Idris’ fills, which are simple and “childish” in a way, but extremely

effective.

I would like to close this chapter with a solo that’s really the blueprint of hip hop drumming

and that stated the foundations and the sound of this music: “Fire Eater” by Rusty Bryant53 ,

min 7.51.

Figure 14: Transcription of Idris Muhammad solo on Rusty Bryant’s “Fire


Eater” (1971).

52 Recorded in 1975 at Rudy Van Gelder Studios and released in 1976 by Kudu Records

53 From the album “Fire Eater”, released in 1971 by Prestige Records


28
“It’s easier to sample someone who plays soul-funk drums, but Idris’ style isn’t like a

straight, raw funk beat like Bernard Purdie would play it. If you listen to Lou Donaldson’s

Alligator Bogaloo or Mr. Shing-A-Ling, it’s still jazzy and loose, but still in the pocket. There’s

an album called Fire-Eater by Rusty Bryant where, in the title song, they give up a drum solo

to Idris, and he just kills it. He’s just doing his thing, and it practically defines hip-hop

drumming. He sounds like a drum machine. He may not realize it, but those 30 seconds in

that drum solo are like the blueprints of hip-hop in just how fierce and hard the drums are” 54

In conclusion to this chapter I would like to underline the big influence of soul/jazz and

funk music over hip hop and particularly over J Dilla: the drummers treated in this chapter

have been really influential on him, that was the music he grew with and that used to listen

and sample, because we can easily say that everything started there, funk and soul are the

fathers of hip hop music; in these genres there are the roots of the sound that hip hop would

have had from the beginning since nowadays. The power of this music, the energy and, at

the same time, its looseness started with drummers like Clyde Stubblefield, Bernard Purdie,

Zigaboo Modeliste and Idris Muhammad: with their playing in the pocket, they gave to music

soul and feelings that, through sampling, are still alive and mixed with the creativity of other

artists.

54Vinnie Esparza, San Francisco-based DJ who uses a plethora of soul, jazz, and psychedelic records in his turntablism
29
Questlove and the Soulquarians

After talking about Dilla’s influences I would like to start the analysis of his influence over

his contemporary music and the music he produced, to also have a better understanding of

how he influenced the music of today. In the half 90s, hip hop was going towards his funeral

but Dilla’s Slum Village demo was a turning point for hip hop and soul music that, at that

time, reached a point of stagnation. Two guys were really impressed of this new guy:

D’Angelo and Ahmir Thompson (aka Questlove), who loved his approach to music because

they thought it was exactly the same as the one they were using in soul music while working

on D’Angelo’s Voodoo: discovering new sounds and rhythm, to try to get out of the stagnation

in which music was.

This desire for the undiscovered and for the unconventional turned into the birth of The

Soulquarians, a collective based in NYC’s Electric Ladyland Studios (from 1997 till 2001),

and created by D’Angelo, Questlove, James Poyser and J Dilla. Around this core were

orbiting other musicians and producers such as Erykah Badu, Roy Hargrove, Pino Palladino,

Common, Q Tip, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Bilal and many others. With this collective Dilla

produced (or co-produced) some of the most important record in hip hop influenced music

and in neo-soul like D’Angelo’s “Voodoo”, Erykah Badu’s “Mama’s Gun”, The Roots’

“Phrenology” and Common’s “Like Water for Chocolate”.

In all these records there is a common line based on discovery and experimenting, that’s

the result of all these like minded people working together; in fact Soulquarians’ records

produced in this period, are really similar to each other for aesthetics and vibe and it’s really

clear how the work of Dilla in this period influenced his contemporary drummers, especially

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson55 who, at that time, was the former drummer and producer of

this collective.

55Born and raised in Philadelphia on January 20th, 1971, he’s the drummer and co-founder of hip hop band The Roots
(and collaborated with many other artists), producer and dj.
30
I would like to start with the analysis of Erykah’s “Didn’t Cha Know” 56, written and

produced together with Jay Dee, it’s (in my opinion) the most “Dilla-ish” song of the whole

record and it’s funny to see how in this case the wobbly feel it’s still in the song even though

he didn’t played it on the MPC, but it’s performed by musicians.

That’s the main groove of the song (see fig. 15).

Figure 15: Drum transcription of “Didn’t Cha Know”’s main groove

As usual it seems a normal groove but how Questlove shuffles the different voices is

really interesting: let’s go deeper by looking at the waveform and the midi roll, see fig 16-17.

Figure 16: Waveform of the first bar of “Didn’t Cha Know” groove

In figure 16 we can notice how the biggest transients, which correspond to kick and snare

hits, are always a little bit early on the count but when we listen to the song we don’t the feel

that he’s pushing the groove because, as we can see in figure 17 (next page), the hi-hat 16th

notes are all swinging and, mostly, late on the count; that shows how the leading voice in this

groove is exactly the hi-hat which has the same feel of the bass line, and that gives us the

feeling of a really laid back groove.

56Second tune of “Mama’s Gun”, album recorded at Electric Ladyland Studios through 1999-2000 and released in 2000
by Motown/Puppy Love Records.
31
Figure 17: Ableton MIDI roll of “Didn’t Cha Know” groove

That’s exactly the consequence of Dilla’s production: even though the drum hits are not

precisely on the count, the groove still has its incredible tightness, giving humanity to a genre

which has its roots in machines and computers.

Another even clearer example of how the “new Dilla sound” influenced a drummer like

Questlove is in Voodoo57, an album that changed the history of soul and hip hop music, and I

couldn’t find better words to describe if not the ones from the co-producer and drummer of

this album, Ahmir ?uestlove Thompson:

“(The critics, ndr) noticed that Voodoo was a different kind of proposition, creatively

speaking. Prior to it, hip hop had used the past in a certain way, stacking new sounds on top

of old sounds and generating […] unexpected collisions, and a treatment of existing classics

that was’t quite reverential but at once more analytical and more standoffish. Voodoo did

something different; it connected to the past in a more organic way. […] They heard us

saying that is was a step up from Brown Sugar but they were worried that we were wrong.” 58

He also says that, as a drummer, musician and coproducer, the days he spent working on

Voodoo were “the most transformative days of my life”.

I’m going to analyse the groove of two tracks of this record in which, in my opinion, the

influence of J Dilla on Questlove is really clear: “The Root” and “Send It On”.

57D’Angelo’s second studio album, recorded at Electric Ladyland Studios through 1998-1999 and released in 2000 by
Cheeba Sound, Virgin Records.

58As Questlove says in his book Mo’ Meta Blues, pp. 178-179 (Grand Central Publishing, 2015)
32
The first is the 8th song of the album but, to get how Dilla influenced the concept behind

drum grooves, we have to start listening to The Root from the track before, “One Mo’Gin”,

exactly from min 5.34, when the original beat fades into a faster one and changes again, at

min 6.04, into a third beat that changes one more time at the beginning of the next track.

That kind of approach in the production of the song make us understand two thing: how this

new (for that time) music was extremely beat oriented and how the humanization of drums

was a necessity for those artists.

“I have spent years learning to become a perfect meticulous drum machine, but now I

wanted to go in the direction I thought music was going […] There’s an option on drum

machines that lets you quantize them, program the drum sounds so that they sounds right

[…] Suddenly some artists were switching that off, and their drums would sound strange at

first, but then warmer and better. Real drummers slow down. They speed up. There different

dynamics at different times. Very few artists understood that. […] D’Angelo was willing to be

imperfect, and that was exciting to me” 59

Looking at the drum notation of this song’s main groove (see fig. 18), the hi-hat is playing

8th notes without accents, the snare is on 2 and 4 and the kick is playing some 16th-based

kick figures.

4
ã4
x x xœ x x x xœ x x x xœ x x x xœ x
. œ œ. œ . œ œ. œ . œ
Drum Set œ. œ œ () ()
Figure 18: Drum notation of “The Roots” groove. The bracket notes
in the second bar are meant to be ghost notes

But even in this case, the beat’s waveform over a 1/16 grid (see fig.19, next page) really

helps to clearly understand where and when Questlove is putting his hits.

59 As Questlove says in his book Mo’ Meta Blues, p. 153 (Grand Central Publishing, 2015)
33
Figure 19: Waveform of "The Root" groove over a 16th notes grid

The biggest transients in the picture are kicks and snare while the smaller ones in

between are the hi-hat hits. Kick and snare are always a little bit before the count, and even

the relation between the kick’s fourth 16th note and the next downbeat, in two bars, it’s

already quite different every time it occurs; also the hi-hat in the first bar is really straight but

then starts to anticipate the count a bit, showing how oscillations of tempo and feel don’t

affect the overall groove, which keeps to be tight due to the strong binding between bass and

drums.

It’s clear how this approach to groove is post-Dilla, for two reasons: compared to the

previous recordings, Quest’s sound is already different and it’s already the sound from which

he’ll be recognized in the years to come, and the “non-quantization” of the drums is really

evident. These are evidences of an evolution from his earlier recordings with The Roots

which, of course are swinging, but not in this particular Dilla-ish way.

“Send It On” is the first ballad of the album (the second one is “Untitled (How Does It

Feel)” which is also the single of this record), a really soul 6/8 ballad which hides distinctive

characteristics of D’Angelo’s new sound and approach to music. It was written after the “re-

invention” of Kool & The Gang’s “Sea of Tranquillity”60 horn riff and there’s a special guest on

this record, Charlie Hunter, guitar/bass player.

60 4th track of first debut studio album from Kool and The Gang, released in 1969 by De-Lite Records.
34
The groove played by Ahmir is a 16th notes-based 6/8 groove which is played in a typical

Dilla way, with oscillation in the hits that are floating over the grid. I’ve analysed an extract of

this groove and, as usual, first the drum notation (see fig. 20) and then a closer look to the

wave form over 1/8 grid (see fig. 21).

Figure 20: drum notation of an extract of “Send It On” groove.

It’s interesting to see his approach to the count, which is different all over the song

(typically Dilla) but that still goes on his track. The hi-hat is the leading voice even in this case

and kick and snare are always a little bit late on the count, to give that sense of opening

which is net contrast with the shuffling feel of the 16ths, which are tight and fast when they

precede the downbeat and really laid back as in the second half of bar three. Important to

notice how even the 16th note that precedes the downbeat is placed in a different place in

that bar and this difference is the reason why it’s impossible to not nod the head while

listening to this track.

Figure 21: wave form of an extract of “Send It On” groove on a 1/8

In the picture above the big transients give a clearer vision of what is going on. Another

example of the influence of Dilla is deductible from the fact that in Questlovle’s playing is full

of empty spaces (usually of half/one bar or so) in place of drum fills; like at min 2.48 where

there’s the break to the bridge.

35
Last but not least, also the approach to sound reflects this new Soulquarian’s way of

making music, for instance the hi-hat is played with the tip and all the groove’s dynamics are

flat to give the impression of an electronic/drum machine sound.

To better understand this change in Questlovle’s way of playing I’m also going to analyse

one song written during the Soulquarians period with his own band The Roots, “You Got Me”

61which has an extremely soulful and hip feel, especially on how he plays the hi-hat.

Even in this case 16th notes are the base to this hip hop groove, the tempo is c. 81 bpm

and the song starts directly with the beat, introduced with a snare hit on the previous beat

(which has been sampled by lots of other artists).

Here’s the drum notation of this beat (see fig. 22).

Figure 22: Drum notation of “You Got Me” groove

It’s full of 16th notes that are played really in between the straight and shuffle feel: starting

from the hi-hat notes which are definitely not straight but always changing their percentage of

shuffling between one notes and another. In the next figure, there’s a clear view of this

distance in the first bar of the groove, thanks to Ableton’s midi roll (see fig. 23).

Figure 23: Ableton’s midi roll of “You Got Me” groove

6115th track of the album “Things Fall Apart”, recorded in 1998 and released in 1999 by MCA Records. Fun fact, this
song was supposed to have Jill Scott on vocals but, for label reasons, she was substituted with Erykah Badu.
36
To a closer look, it’s noticeable how also the kick and snare are displaced and not

precisely on the count but they are always a bit in front, in clear contrast with the hi-hat which

is laid back: that gives a general sense of tightness and looseness to the groove. Important

to see how he also, plays the hi-hat with different small accents that contribute to improve

this wobbly feel which, in the end of the song, is only maintained by the bass and the vocals,

because at min 3.22 Questlove (with a typical old school hip hop style) starts playing a

double time breakbeat which is super straight.

Last but not least, I’m going to analyse a track of one of The Roots previous albums’

tracks to better evidence how Questlove’s drumming changed after his Soulquarian period,

underlining how he switched from a more “traditional” approach (more linked to the funk guys

from the 70s) to the new “post-Dilla” sound.

Even though it’s hard to choose a track, “Push Up Your Lighter” from Illadelph Life 62 it’s a

great example of the old school hip hop drumming tradition, and it’s also similar to “You Got

Me”, so it’s easier to make a comparison Already from the start, the sound of the drums is

clearly 90ish, it’s trashy and it can be felt that he’s trying to emulate an electronic sound,

especially from the use of dynamics which are the same during the all song.

Figure 24: Drum notation of “Push Up Your Lighter” groove

The shuffle of this groove is really constant all over the song and even though it’s clearly

hip hop, it still doesn’t have that sparkle that the music made after Questlove’s meeting with

Dilla has.

In conclusion to this chapter there’s no need of any other exaplanation that describes

Yancey’s influence on Questlove, if not the one he gave on an interview for XXL Magazine on

2012 (see next page):

62 Which is the third studio album by The Roots, released on September 24, 1996 by Geffen Records.
37
“[…]for what my eyes have seen in those short nine years that I’ve known him, that’s

going to be a very tall order to live up to. It’s [been]…God, six years since he passed [and] I

still use his beats as the energy power pellets to my Pacmanology, if you will.

[Why? Because] I like his kick patches better than anyone; I love his snare patches better

than anyone; I love his sample chops better than anyone; I like his ability to flip samples

better than anyone; I like his engineering better than anyone; I love his chord structure better

than anyone; I love his bass tones better than anyone. It really just starts there. And having

listened to all of his beat creations, and over-analyzed them over a hundred times each,

there’s just an extreme pristine presentation. Even the stuff that you’re lukewarm on as an

average listener, you can’t deny.” 63 


63Questlove on a 2012 interview for XXL Magazine, title “Questlove on Why J Dilla Was The Best Rap Producer of All
Time”
38
Contemporary Dilla: Floor to the drummers

To go further into my research on how J Dilla’s music influenced modern drummers, I’m

going to analyse how this happened to some drummer that are, and have been, really

influential to me, like Richard Spaven (Josè James, Flying Lotus), Chris Dave (D’Angelo,

Robert Glasper, Meshell Ndegeocello), Perrin Moss (Hiatus Kaiyote) and Mark Colenburg

(Robert Glasper Experiment).

Starting with Richard Spaven, drummer and producer from London defined by Blue Note

artist Josè James64 “one of the most unique artist in the world”; I’m going to explain how he

has been influenced by Dilla’s music, by analysing few tracks to understand how his playing

feel and approach is really linked to Yancey’s ones.

The first track I’m going to analyse is “Angel” by José James65, which is a work that has

been “indirectly inspired” by Dilla’s works66 .

The song start with an Hendrix-ish guitar open part and, at min 0.25, it drops into a gritty

and wobbly Dilla beat (see fig. 25).

Figure 25: Drum notation of “Angel” groove. The notes in parenthesis are optional

The hi-hat feel is typically Dilla, with a huge shuffling which is floating over the grid, the

kick hits are slightly laid back while the snare is usually on the count (during the song,

sometimes, it’s also a little bit late). On the second beat of the groove the last 32nd note on

the hi-hat is played in a resolving way to the next beat: the distance between this note and

the next one is shorter than a “common” 32nd but larger then a grace note’s distance. Also in

this case, to go deeper into the understanding of this groove, Ableton’s midi roll comes to

help (see fig. 26, next page).

64 About Section in Richard Spaven’s website, http://www.richardspaven.com/about

65 Opening track of the album “While You Were Spleeping”, release in 2014 by Blue Note Records.

66 As Richard Spaven says in an interview I made with him for this research (2015)
39
Figure 26: Midi roll of “Angel” groove over a 1/16 note grid.

After having analysed his way of playing the best evidence of Dilla’s influence on his

playing is, without any doubt, himself answering some questions I’ve asked him during an

interview:

- In which way is your work influenced by J Dilla? As a drummer, how did your

perception of groove change in relation to his type of swing?

The approach to placement and swing is really different, as a drummer, you have more

scope for laid back feel and stretching of time

- How would you describe Dilla’s music?

Its solid... its just a feel. If you nod your head to it then you get it.

- How do you think J Dilla has inspired beat-makers and musicians in the past

decade?

The swing has become part of drumming language. The same feel is evident in his

rapping... so behind the beat... I don't know that he was the first to do it... but he was

incredible at doing it. Its swing and its gritty, “straight to the cassette” sound are also its more

copied features.

- How do you consider his influence over contemporary music (specifically in nu

soul, hiphop, future soul, but also in pop and jazz music)?

I think all these scenes benefitted from his influence. Best producer of our time. The way

he used jazz records brought a lot of music to my attention that I wouldn't have heard

otherwise.

40
Another great influence of mine is Perrin Moss, drummer and producer of the Australian

band Hiatus Kaiyote (band nominated for the Grammy Award RnB Best Performance in 2014

and 2016), and I’ve have found several interviews from which I could answer my questions,

to understand how his drumming has been influenced by Dilla’s music.

- In which way is your work influenced by J Dilla? As a drummer, how did your

perception of groove change in relation to his type of swing?

Well, when I first heard of Dilla it was with artists such as A Tribe Called Quest, the

Pharcyde, Slum Village, De La Soul. These guys were all my influential hip hop crew growing

up. I never usually took notice to who was producing their tracks, it was only after hearing

“Donuts”67 that I discovered he was THE man. Around this time I wasn’t drumming yet but I

wanted to put a live feel to my productions and I thought… why not? There is no drummer

that can play like a metronome. But really there was, so I decided to pull certain notes back

and forth and not chop the lead sample. I would instead trying to move the time any way I

could fit with the sample’s. This to me was a nice way forward and something different from

what I had heard before.68

- How would you describe J Dilla’s music? How do you think J Dilla has inspired

beat-makers and musicians in the past decade?

When he makes a beat, you can bump it in the club, in the car or when you are falling

asleep. I think there’s a little something for everyone to take from Dilla’s collection. J Dilla is

one of the most influential producer of our time, not only to beat makers but also to

composers, drummers, guitarists, bass players, vocalists and MC’s. […] He’s a pioneer, like

Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, James Brown and many other. 69

67Last Dilla’s studio album, released on February 7, 2006, his 32nd birthday, and only three days before his death by
Stones Throw Records.

68 From an interview in Davide Sciortino’s dissertation “Why Would You Quantize All of This” (2014)

69 From an interview in Davide Sciortino’s dissertation “Why Would You Quantize All of This” (2014)
41
The get further in details I’m going to analyse one of the most famous songs by his band,

“Nakamarra”70, which has really been inspired by Dilla71 and that shows this influence in an

extremely bright way, in the bridge and outdo of the song (min 2.17-2.32 and 3.48-end).

In the following picture, the drum transcription of the groove in the outro of the song min.

4.04 (see fig. 27).

Figure 27: Drum notation of “Nakamarra” groove (min

It’s interesting to see how a simple groove like this could be played in a completely

different way and feel: Moss shuffles these notes so much, that’s impossible to not nod the

head. Here’s how he actually plays the first bar of this groove in relation to a 1/16th note grid

of 92 bpm (see fig. 28).

Figure 28: Ableton midi roll of “Nakamarra” groove (min

On paper everything seems out of time, but the energy of this groove, mixed with the

rhythms of the vocals and the bass line, goes over the click, taking back humanity to music

throughout the song, in a typical Dilla style. The hi-hat has a slight accent on the upbeat

notes, which gives an even more relaxed feel to the beat.

But the greatest example that shows how he has been influenced by Jay Dee, in my

opinion, it can be find in “Shaolin Monk Motherfunk”72 , second single of Hiatus Kaiyote’s

70 10th track of Hiatus Kaiyote’s first EP “Tawk Tomahawk”, released in 2013 by Flying Buddah Records.

71 As he says in an interview from Davide Sciortino’s dissertation “Why Would You Quantize All of This” (2014)

722nd track and 2nd single of Hiatus Kaiyote’s album “Choose Your Weapon”, released in 2015 by Flying Buddah
records
42
second album. The song starts with a great synth work, with sounds that make the listener

understand why that “shaolin monk” is in the title; the voice comes in really soaring but really

soon from a mercy beat (with rim-click on every count), the band goes to a swing feel for few

bars to switch again into a reggaeish beat driven by a super shuffled, but wobbly, 16th base

played on a woodblock. All these quotations turn into a Dilla beat (min 4.14) for a couple of

bars introducing the track into an abyss of arpeggiated licks and brooding drums.

This song is full of Dilla’s influences in every field from the arrangement to the production;

from the choice of using a jazz swinging feel (which also sound “old” and vinyl-like,

production-wise) to go to a reggae/second line groove and end the song with a post-rock

sound, passing through a Dilla beat. In all his discography, is clearly audible how his

approach is not only linked to rhythm but also to the research for the perfect sound for every

song/production, in two albums is really possible to feel the evolution and the need for that

that this drummer has.

The third drummer I’ve managed to interview for this research is Mark Colenburg, actual

drummer for Robert Glasper Experiment, who defines Dilla a genius, because he “always

kept progressing, never settling for what he had done in the past” 73 ; this sentence already

shows how is has been influenced by his music.

In the next page, some of the questions I’ve asked him for this research.

- In which way is your work influenced by J Dilla? As a drummer, how did your

perception of groove change in relation to his type of swing?

Even though there's not just one beat that have inspired one of my tracks (because Dilla

has so many amazing ones), you definitely can hear his influence in my tracks and playing.

He influenced me in his creativity: he wasn't afraid to take chances & try new things. As a

musician/drummer he changed my perspective of groove by showing many different ways to

approach and interpret feel: he enlightened me on how sound & texture create different feels.

73 As he says in an interview I made with him for this research (2015)


43
- How did you approach, drumming wise, this way of playing? As a drummer, how

do you approach the beat making process?

The way I incorporated a lot of the new perspectives I got from Dilla, was to listen to more

music, more intently;  in doing that, musicality naturally began to show in my music.

The way I approach making "Beats" is to look at it as making music. Music all starts with

what you think, then hear, and then what can be executed. Thinking that way I have no limits

on the outcome. The ultimate end goal is to have good music, which I think was Dilla's goal

too.

- How do you think J Dilla has inspired beat-makers and musicians in the past

decade and what’s his influence over contemporary music (specifically in nu soul,

hiphop, future soul, but also in pop and jazz music)?

I think Dilla inspired musicians & producers to not be afraid to explore music. That

different groove ideas, melody & harmony is ok. Also, that an individual doesn't have to be

labeled as one thing, but rather can be a singer, rapper, instrumentalist, engineer or whatever

to explore art. His influence is heard in how to be simple & yet complex, and how to blend

genres of music together seamlessly. His influence on music abroad could be sum up in how

to be simple & yet complex, and how to blend genres of music together seamlessly.

To get into practical and technical things, I’ve analysed two tracks from Robert Glasper

Experiment’s Black Radio: Vol. 274, a record that has also been a great inspiration for me:

“What Are We Doing” and “Trust”, the first one is interesting because it’s a typical Dilla

groove and the other one has a more straight groove which still has a wobbly feel due to a

particular hi-hat pattern; both songs are also based on small drum loops, that links them to

the world of sampled based music.

“What Are We Doing” is the third track of the album, the bpm is 96 and the groove is the

one shown in figure 29.

74Sixth studio album from Robert Glasper, released by Blue Note Records in 2013, follow up of the Grammy Award
winner Black Radio, released in 2012
44
Figure 29: drum notation of main groove of “What Are We

It is clearly a simple beat, that stays mostly the same through the song, for the exception

of few variations (Colenburg just adds one sixteenth note before the downbeat) but what

makes the difference is in the inner dynamics and the small displacement of the hits.

The audio wave of this groove can help on understanding where the hits stand (see fig.

30).

Figure 30: Audio waveform of “What Are We Doing” groove over a 1/16th

As it’s shown, all the downbeats are a little earlier than the click, and the kick 16th note on

3 is really shuffled towards the 4th count; this alternation of tight and loose gives a feel of

organicity in the groove; in addition to that, the inner dynamics of the hi-hat which is played a

little bit louder when it’s not with any other piece of the drum kit, creates a sort of side chain

compression which makes this groove vibrate even more. Other Dilla influence is audible at

the end of the first chorus (min 1.12) when there’s the typical old school hip hop break that

leaves an empty bar in place of a drum fill.

The other song is “Trust”, 6th song of the same album which an interesting groove in the

chorus (see fig. 31, next page).

45
Figure 31: drum notation of groove in the chorus of “Trust”

The missing notes of the hi-hat on the beat, together with the small crescendo in the

group of three 16ths gives laziness to the groove which is in clear contrast with a steady kick

and snare hits that are pushing the groove, especially aided by the really shuffling hits on the

last 16th of the second and fourth movements.

This contrast makes this beat spacey but tight at the same time, fitting perfectly with the

harmonic rhythm of the piano, the bass and all the melodic lines.

“I think a couple of the features that has been copied the most, are how he incorporated

harmony and how some of the elements in some of his beats may lay behind or ahead of the

beat a little.”75

Another great drummer that influenced me is Chris “Daddy” Dave, drummer class ’73 for

Chris Dave & The Drumhedz, Robert Glasper, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, Josè James and

many others. It’s easy to say that he brought a huge revolution in drumming and I could

easily define him a pioneer and an innovator for hip hop drumming especially because of his

time stretching skills.

He’s clearly been influenced by Dilla and that’s audible since the first random track from

him; just typing his name on YouTube shows up all videos that includes his signature groove

“a la Dilla”.

I’ve decided to analyse two of his groove: the one on Robert Glasper’s version of “Afro

Blue” and “Trouble” from Josè James; two artist that I really like and that influenced me a lot

with their music.

“Afro Blue” is a jazz standard recorded by Robert Glasper Experiment of his album Black

Radio76, and features Erykah Badu on vocals. Usually this song is played in 3/4 but Glasper

75 As Mark Colenburg says answering a question for an interview I made for this research (2015)

76 Fifth studio album of Robert Glasper, released in 2012 by Blue Note Records
46
arranged it in a really Dillaish way by playing it in 4/4 and having Erykah Badu and Chris

Dave in his line up.

Figure 32: Drum notation of the four bars loop groove of Robert Glasper

After four bars of intro, the groove showed in figure 32 jumps in. The way this groove is

played is extremely recognisable because of Chris Dave’s sound and shuffling: already in the

eight notes there’s a laid back pulse, also given from small accents on the upbeats and on

the non unison eight notes, all the sixteenth notes are shuffle even the sixteenth notes triplet

in bar two there and the use of a tambourine on the hi-hat, which is hearable only when he

accents some hi-hat notes, ensures a wobbly feel to this groove because of its late rebound.

Also the sounds choice from Daddy is really hip, in this tune the snare sounds in between

electronic and acoustic, while the kick is super punchy and has common lines with one of the

most used drum machine ever in hip hop, the Roland 808. In the last two bar the repetition of

a pattern of only two quarters long, let the aware listener understand the influence of based

sampled music on this drummer.

The other groove is in the third song of “No Beginning No End”77, the beat is around 89

and I really like this groove because it really flows in between waves of laying down and

Figure 33: Drum notation of “Trouble” main groove

pushing.

77 Fourth album of Jose James, released on January 22, 2013 by Blue Note Records
47
As usual the notes played need to be interpreted and to get what’s happening looking at

the audio waveform over a grid and see the midi roll it’s really helpful (see fig. 34-35).

Figure 34: Audio waveform over a 1/16th grid of “Trouble” groove.

Figure 35: Zoom on the third bard of “Trouble” groove

As it’s clearly visible in figure 35, the main hits of the beat (highlighted with a yellow

marker on the timeline), are always a little bit late on the count, while the hi-hat is really

shuffling, but on a different resolution than the sixteenth notes played by the kick which also

are on a different shuffle feel than the one used for the snare sixteenth notes. The midi roll

helps to have a brighter view over the placement of these notes (see fig. 36, next page).

48
Figure 36: midi roll of the first two bars of “Trouble” groove.

The union of different resolutions played all over the place, gives to the groove the Dilla’s

wobbly feel, together with a deep bass line played by Pino Palladino.

“…Probably the most dangerous drummer alive. He is totally reinventing just what you can

do with drums.”78

In conclusion, especially within this four drummer, it’s really obvious how they got

influenced by Dilla’s music and incorporated it in their playing by catching its characteristics,

like a sampling approach to drum sounds (always trying to find different and new sounds),

the un-quantized swing feel and the will of being over the genres and used them all to make

your own music.

78 Questlove about Chris Dave in a a quotation on Dave’s website.


49
Conclusion

The lack of clear sources and my deep interest for hip hop music in the last years, made

me focus on this research with the purpose of making understandable how a genius like

Dilla, influenced the way drums are played today.

I’ve figured out that in hip hop and sample based music there aren’t enough sources to

have a clear understanding of Dilla’s approach to drums, that’s why, in three steps, analysing

his beats, his influences and then the grooves that came after him from other drummers, I’ve

found a new way of understanding and explaining this feeling in a more academic way.

In summary I’ve started from his life and career, to get to know his approach to production,

and his evolution through the years, from his first records with Slum Village until Donuts. At

first I’ve analysed his own beats, figuring out a method of comparing drum notation with

waveforms and midi clips on the grid, which helped me to really understand the interpretation

of the notes relative distance, turning out to be extremely clear and useful, especially for

educational and learning purposes.

With this method I’ve analysed grooves from the past, from which Dilla was influenced

(and that he also re-invented through sampling), I’ve tried to demonstrate how his feel on

drums had roots in funk and soul, when drummers from the 60s and 70s like Clyde

Stubblefield, Idris Muhammad and Zigaboo Modeliste were playing “in between the cracks”,

in between a completely straight or swing feel being themselves influenced by the music that

came before them.

After that, I had enough ground to build the answer to my main question:

“How did J Dilla influenced modern drummers?”

I think that the best way to understand it is listen to a lot of his music and today’s artists to

pick up the pieces and trying to figure out common lines and factor that lead me to an answer

to my question. By analysing different grooves from the 00s till today, starting with the

Soulquarians period and ending up with Hiatus Kaiyote, with my notation-waveform-midi

comparison method, I’ve shown how it’s clearly evident that drummers in today’s hip hop,

50
soul and jazz scene are deeply influenced by Jay Dee’s style because they incorporated it so

deeply in their drumming.

The constant research to the best sounds (Dilla used to wrangle split-second clips from

albums just for the timbre of a single note, or the texture of vinyl, or the clack of a snare drum

hit), the un-quantized rhythmic feel and the merging of different genres and influences are

obviously inspired by Jay Dee, and the mindful use of these option, nowadays, is inside most

modern drummers.

All the modern drummers I’ve been speaking about (and unluckily I couldn’t take more, for

space reasons) are always talking about him as a genius and a great music innovator;

Karriem Riggins, friend and collaborator of Yancey, jazz drummer and hip hop producer

defines him “So important” and puts him in the same category of Herbie Hancock, Miles and

all the great jazz innovators; and I have to completely agree with this definition, his genius

made a revolution in hip hop history, which was so big that also came into other genres: he

brought back humanity to hip hop music, and more widely it brought back in music a sense of

spontaneous imperfection which makes his grooves breathing and light, sensations that

collide with the desperate and forced search for perfection of the modern society.

Through this research I’ve developed a new “tool” that helps understanding this approach

to drumming, that still has to be sided with an accurate learning process by ear; because to

really get this kind of music it’s important to listen to it as much as possible, trying to copy

and then absorb it; I’ve also wide my knowledge about where, how and when the hits of the

drum are placed in relation with the count, thanks to the analysis through Ableton, that

helped me to check kick and snare through using audio waveforms and hit hits through midi

conversion.

I also think that there’s still space for further researches which I thought to work on, like

attempt to notate drum parts with a different method that can also suit the common notation;

build a J Dilla library of sounds and sample that could be used as percussion effect with an

hybrid drumming (electronic mixed with acoustic drum kits) approach, that could lead to get

51
his layering production skills into a live setting through the use of triggers and other devices.

Another interesting research could be analysing how his technical studio abilities affected the

general sound of the grooves (e.g..: side chain compression) or how to really emulate his

drum machines sounds only using acoustic instruments.

”At home, I have my Rhodes and drum set set up. When my bandmates come over, we’ll

play a Dilla beat for literally an hour, because it feels so good, and that's all that matters to

me. I think that's harder [than playing chord changes]. It takes discipline. He's the producer

that makes you change the way you play. ... When you just play the beat for what it is, the

repetition definitely gets you into a spiritual space.” 79

79 Robert Glasper about J Dilla in an article on npr.com titlte “Why J Dilla May Be Jazz's Latest Great Innovator”.
52
Sources

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be-jazzs-latest-great-innovator

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www.whosampled.com

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54
Discography

Common (2000), Like Water for Chocolate. MCA, Universal Records

D’Angelo (2000), Voodoo. Virgin/EMI

Dick Hayman (1969), The Age of Electronicus. Command Label

Erykah Badu (2000), Mama’s Gun. Motown

Hiatus Kaiyote (2012), Tawk Tomahawk. Flying Buddah

Hiatus Kaiyote (2015), Choose Your Weapon. Flying Buddah

Idris Muhammad (1976), House of the Rising Sun. Kudu Label

Isley Brothers, The (1969), It’s Our Thing. T-Neck Label

Isley Brothers,The (1977), Go For Your Guns. T-Neck Label

James Brown (1969), Funky Drummer. King Records

James Brown (1974), Hell. King Records

Jaylib (2003), Champion Sound. Stone Throw Records

J Dilla (2001), Welcome 2 Detroit. BBE

J Dilla (2003), Ruff Draft. Stones Throw Records

J Dilla (2006), Donuts. Stone Throw Records

J Dilla (2006), The Shining. BBE

José James (2012), No Beginning No End. Blue Note Records

José James (2014), While You Were Sleeping. Blue Note Records

Kool & The Gang (1969), Sea of Tranquillity. De-Lite Records

Marley Marl (1988), In Control. Cold Chillin/Warner Bros

Meters, The (1974), They All Ask For You / Hey Pocky A-Way. Sansu Records

Robert Glasper Experiment (2012), Black Radio. Blue Note Records

Robert Glasper Experiment (2013), Black Radio 2. Blue Note Records

Rusty Bryant (1971), Fire Eater. Prestige Records

Slum VIllage (2000), Fantastic, Vol. 2. Barak Records

The Roots (1996), Illadelph Life. Gaffe Records

The Roots (1999), Things Fall Apart. MCA Records

55
The Roots (2002), Phrenology. MCA Records

Whodini (1984), Escape. Jive/Arista Records

56
Visual Media

Erykah Badu RedBull Music Academy Lecture, 2011, [Video Online] https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdKJttDTbDA

D’Angelo RedBull Music Academy Lecture, 2014, [Video Online] https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD1oaBCmZWA

Questlove RedBull Music Academy Lecture, 2013, [Video Online] https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCxVzCe2N1Y

Bling47 Break Dilla Edition Playlist, 2012, [Video Online] https://www.youtube.com/

playlist?list=PLUjRLqgT2VpVK9Y5zhaOkF9J85XwTH9vb

J Dilla Carried onto the stage for one of his last performances RIP DILLA!!, [Video Online]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81F2bXuJ_KU

Hip Hop Producer, Rapper Jay Dee AKA J Dilla, NPR Music, 2006 [Online] http://

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5205096

Brian K. Atkins, J Dilla “Still Shining” Documentary, 2006, [Video Online] https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jhxIY3WNw0

Dilla Interview 2003 (part 1,2,3,4 of 4), 2003, [Video Online] https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=YKGm3wc3qOE

Busta Rhymes on J Dilla, 2008, [Video Online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=u4Qinzz9w9w

Fuse TV - J Dilla’s Vynil Collection - Crate Diggers, 2013 [Video Online] https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL3ENrZwjmw

Gus Sutherland - All Ears, not published yet, https://vimeo.com/63152929

Introducing Marley Marl ! Howd U Get Started Sampling? BtMkRs.Com, 2008, [Video

Online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vof_jmhBSU8

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, “Questlove Explains “Little Brother’s Beat”, 2012, http://

www.hulu.com/watch/315258

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