J-Dilla

Saturday was my twenty fourth birthday. At the end of the day, well spent eating Biscuits with Corin, lounging at Crema, and eating tasty Greek food with my family, I went to the Roseland and saw Mos Def perform. One of the opening acts was Jay Electronica, a charismatic and somewhat avant-garde rapper who is known more, perhaps unfairly, for being Erykah Badu's baby daddy instead of his talent for rapping. I was gladdened by the time that he set aside to honor and memorialize J-Dilla by playing his beats and getting the audience to go crazy and be as loud as possible.

The reason I bring this up is to draw attention to the latest J-Dilla album to come out, Jay Stay Paid. "But Eli," you might ask, "Dilla died over three years ago, how could he still be releasing?" Well, his mother (Ma Dukes, as she is known) knew that there was still a lot of Dilla beats that were floating around on old floppy discs and hard drives and wanted the world to hear them. Teaming up with the legendary Pete Rock, they produced this amazing album.

The album is mostly instrumental, but there are quite a few guest rappers that rhyme over his tracks, notably Black Thought of The Roots and MF DOOM, among many other M.C.'s that Dilla had worked with through the years. I've been listening to this album almost everyday (sometimes twice) since I picked it up over a week ago. If you're a fan of Hip Hop, you need this.

Song of the Day: Lazer Gunne Funke, J-Dilla