Fun fact, I can see Detroit from my bedroom window.
Detroit’s a rough, tough, beaten down city. It is. Has been for a while. But a lot of my favourite artists have come out of that place.
It’s a place that thrived on R&B, gospel, jazz and soul. You got Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Dorothy Ashby, Donald Byrd, Thad Jones, Yusef Lateef, Alice Coltrane, Dwele, Diana Ross, Martha Reeves, The Spinners, Jackie Wilson. Plus, I’ll throw in Funkadelic as a bit of a bonus.
Then you have Jack White, MC5, Alice Cooper, The Stooges, Death, The Meatmen, The Dirtbombs and so on doing the entire ‘Detroit rock city’ thing. Which is cool. That’s awesome.
Of course, later Detroit would be the city of techno. Jeff Mills, Blake Baxter, Carl Craig, Derrick May and Eddie Fowlkes coined a new term for bass. It’s Detroit bass. It’s different, it’s bigger, it’s fuller, and people were treating the sound like gold for a brief period of time. Omas-S and Theo Parrish as still kicking it, but for the most part that scene has died down a little (people found out how to make big deep sounds in Logic and ProTools since).
And hell, Sufjan Stevens and Madonna are from Detroit too. It’s a mish mush.
But for now, I’m going to focus a bit on hip-hop. All of those groups and artists were important to mention though, I’ll get to that. Detroit is a unique style of hip-hop. It isn’t the dusty, hard-hitting jazz-based New York style, and it’s not funky like what’s going on in the west coast, and it’s really nothing at all like what’s going on down south in Atlanta and Miami. It’s rough, it’s sharp, it’s unapologetic, and it isn’t afraid to attack you. It’s also pretty cold sounding. Kinda like Detroit. Of course, when most people nowadays think of hip-hop (and maybe even Detroit), someone that will most likely come to mind is Eminem. Which is fair. He’s super famous and whatnot. Eminem is a polarized artist. There seem to be people who like him (who are arguably the worst fans in the world) and then there are people that don’t (who are arguably just trying not to be part of the worst fan base in the world). Early Eminem is important though, he truly helped put Detroit hip-hop on the map. At the time, it was something surprisingly different. It was stripped down. It was a beat, and an MC, and those two elements had to be the best they could possibly try to be. When you look at a list of rapper from Detroit, the list isn’t as long as you might think. Danny Brown, Big Sean, Black Milk, Quelle Chris, The Cool Kids, Elzhi, Angel Haze, Royce, and Xzibit are all from here, cool, but for the most part MC’s don’t break out from Detroit. They stay there. They’re part of the local scene, they last a few years, they have a few rap battles, and that’s about it. There’s some real crap here too of course, wannabes and whatnot, but they fade out quickly. Hip-hop is competitive in Detroit, and the competition pretty much stays in Detroit. It’s an odd relationship, especially considering it’s music. Some hip-hop digs from this year include Karriem Riggins (very Dilla-ish) and Quelle Chris. Check em out.
There was an artist from Detroit who took all of this, the soul, the gospel, the jazz, the R&B, the rock, the techno and the hip-hop and understood it. He just got it. He understood the vibe, understood the flavours and understood how to make them his own. This thread is going to focus on talking a bit about J Dilla, and his subsequential final album Donuts.
L-L-Ladies and gentlemen… L-L-L-Ladies and gentlemen… It's that time at The Regal Young man went out and made a name for himself He's been on every record-breaking show…
It’s said that J Dilla is the only hip-hop producer that actually changed how musicians played their instruments. His sampling and chopping and rearranging made drummers and bassists and piano players think differently about what they were doing. Of course, he also changed how everyone did hip-hop, so there’s that too.
Dilla was of course a member of Slum Village, a hip-hop trio from Detroit, and he slowly became the standout member. The producer. Sure, that happened occasionally, but not too often. Even today, that doesn’t really happen too much. Artists from all over the States wanted to work with him. MC’s from Chicago, New York, LA, and Philly all wanted to work with him. Some did, some never got the chance. He quickly started producing for De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, The Pharcyde, Common, Janet Jackson, A Tribe Called Quest, Mos Def, The Roots, D’Angelo, Guru, the list went on (but not too far).
Now. Not too many hip-hop producers (then, and now) have had successful instrumental albums. Avalanches withstanding, there’s Nujabes, Oh No, Pete Rock, DOOM, Madlib…. that’s about all that come to mind. And nothing they ever did topped Donuts. So apart from the talent behind it, how did this album work?
Donuts is 43 minutes long and 31 tracks. There’s only actually one track that’s longer than 2 minutes. Most of the tracks on Donuts are even difficult to constitute as fully fledged out ‘songs’, or even full instrumentals for rappers to go over, but they don’t have to be. If anything, he’s just given us a tasting menu of (well…) tiny, delicious donuts. You don’t ever really want to eat 31 donuts in one sitting, but 31 bites is pretty doable (albeit a little indulgent I suppose, but just go with it for the metaphor). Keep in mind that this is a guy who could find a sample that no one else would even consider, cut it, sample it, queue up his MPC, hit record and have a track down in 10 minutes from start to finish. It takes a lot of producers days to just find samples.
Donuts, in a sense, almost feels like a dream. It’s a personal and visionary album. It’s less something you listen to and more of something that you walk into. This was a release that completely showcases Dilla’s sound and what he was aiming for as a producer. Lush, full beats that never let you completely digest them. The float in your head as if there’s no floor and no ceiling, just swimming around and pounding away. Things flutter in and out of the sounds casually, tempo’s change, textures and constantly moving, sampled vocals cut in and out of the beats and there’s a certain understanding to every hit.
Now, Donuts isn’t a blueprint. This isn’t an album for other producers and rapper to say “hey, let’s do that”, it doesn’t work that way. There are plenty of producers who have tried of course, but they don’t really have those nuances that Dilla had. They lack a certain life to their instrumentals. They don’t breathe the same way. You might also take note that the instrumentals on Donuts are extremely difficult to rap over. These aren’t simple things. DOOM, Q-Tip, Busta Rhymes, Nas, Ghostface, Lupe Fiasco, Drake and Jay Electronica have all gone over beats off of Donuts, and to be frank, you can tell they struggled a little. I’ve never heard a rapper improve one of the tracks on this album, which is pretty insane when you think of the concept of hip-hop. Donuts is, in a sense, experimental hip-hop. At times it barely resembles hip-hop as we know it at all, but it is. This is what hip-hop was built on.
Sadly, 95% of Donuts was made in a hospital. This was an album made in Dilla’s final days, released only three days before his death. Most recently, we’ve been through a similar process with David Bowie last year. It still feels very strange for me to type that, but it’s true. A year has passed and I’m still not completely over the fact that Bowie died, but I digress. I just wished to point out the similarities of circumstances that Donuts and Blackstar were made. I felt like it was appropriate. This is an album that you can listen to knowing that this is what a man chose to spend his final days making. He loved it, and never wanted to stop.
I’m going to throw out some lame and arguably incorrect and out of proportion art comparisons. There are a lot of hip-hop producers that sample songs in a similar way to how Warhol sampled his pop art prints. They’re blatantly sampled tracks (which isn’t always a bad thing) that simply turn one track into another so that MC’s can rap over them. This is a strange comparison, but I hope that gets the gist across. I’m mainly talking about producers that’ll lift entire hooks or instrumentals and change them only the minute amount. J Dilla was slightly more of a Picasso in this sense. You can’t really tell what he’s done with the sample unless you have the final product in front of you. Picasso redid Las Meninas several times, and all he was trying to do it was justice. He just wanted what he saw in it to become a reality. I think Dilla thought similarly. He didn’t sample music in such a way that it was purely hype (by far in large the artists he sampled aren’t terribly well known), but rather in a way that he elevated the songs and transformed them into something new (and arguably more interesting). It’s estimated that Dilla used around 950 samples in his collective released material.
Considering there are 31 tracks, I’m not going to go into all of them individually and in detail, but I am going to skim over some interesting standout moments and ideas he had. Some of the more popular artists sampled on Donuts include The Jackson 5, Gene Chandler, 10cc, Malcolm McLaren, Shuggie Otis, ESG, Smokey Robinson, James Brown, Fred Frith, Stevie Wonder, Mountain, The Isley Brothers and Frank Zappa. That’s a pretty eclectic mix to be fair. The thing is, you don’t really pick up that these artists have songs sampled on Donuts. Sure, sometimes it’s just slivers and fragments of their tracks, but they’re there. I think that was the key to his production technique. He could turn a 3 second sample into an entire track.
I’m going to push an easily recognizable sample off of Donuts.
Those bits were turned into this track ^. Now, this is Michael Jackson. For the most part, producers stay away from Jackson due to his popularity. But this worked. It’s bold, different, and nearly unrecognizable (at first).
Now, one of my favourite tracks off of Donuts is Waves. Mainly because there isn’t a lot of hip-hop that sounds like it, and it comes down to the sample that was used. It’s from a 10cc song. This one:
Now instead of you combing through this track to try and find it, it’s a minuscule moment around the 1:56 mark. In all seriousness, it’s an insane notion that anyone figured they could even sample that bit of a song and turn it into it’s own thing. This daringness is also what makes Donuts so monumental.
Dilla didn’t actually do took much to this track. He pretty much just took the first 40 seconds and added a beat, but it’s clearly one of the most recognizable tracks off of Donuts. Raymond Scott’s track is pretty wacky as it, but it’s not really anything spectacular.
I truly mean it when I say it sounds more natural in his sampled track than in the original song. It just feels like it fits as a hip-hop sample. It’s not your typical R&B, soul, etc… but it quite clearly makes sense.
Donuts is an album that encapsulates what Detroit is about. It’s a mashup of a lot of different roots, all doing different things in different ways. I think it’s a major staple not only for hip-hop, but the city. It’s undeniably a masterwork in hip-hop and beatmaking, and I hope it gives future producers something to aspire to.
I’m going to add that my favourite tracks are Gobstopper, Waves, Two Can Win and U-Love.
Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.
(People Records, Detroit, where a lot of Dilla’s samples were dug up)
Questions:
What is your stance on sampling in hip-hop? I can’t believe that in 2017 this is still a controversial topic, but apparently it is. There are people out there who will yell at producers because “they aren’t really playing the instruments” or “they stole that”, and I don’t really get that. Hip-hop is a genre based entirely on sampling. They take one thing, and make it into another. Sometimes that thing is better, and sometimes it isn’t. So, the question is do you think sampling music is (for lack of a better word) ethical, and should be respected as an art form?
What’s your favourite track off of Donuts and why?
Did Dilla actually improve the tracks he was sampling, or just changing them? Is this a comparable thing?
Does an artist’s imminent death affect your perceptions of an album? Also, should it? This question is not supposed to be meant with a negative perception. Personally, I believe that it should, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Who do you believe is the greatest hip-hop producer of all time?
Challenge/experiment: Now, this is purely for fun and I’m not entirely sure if I’m even expecting anyone to do it. I’m challenging anyone to making a sample based hip-hop instrumental and share it. That’s the challenge. Simple as that. Just wanna see what people come up with. You can send/post them however you want.
I have a bit of a head start here obviously, but I've prepared an untitled hip-hop instrumental that consists of samples from James Brown's It's A Man's World, Lamont Dozier's Don't Stop Playing Our Song, a William Burrough's speech, and the drum pallet is taken from SBTRKT's Wildfire. It's not terribly great, I feel like I couldn't get the drums quite right, but it's all in good fun.
Looking forward to seeing what everyone does!
Last edited by Hayden on 04/30/2017 01:58; edited 7 times in total
You're in Windsor. I always pictured you as from Montreal. Fun fact, Windsor is one the few places in Canada where you can look due north at the US.
Anyway...
Hayden wrote:
What is your stance on sampling in hip-hop? I can’t believe that in 2017 this is still a controversial topic, but apparently it is. There are people out there who will yell at producers because “they aren’t really playing the instruments” or “they stole that”, and I don’t really get that. Hip-hop is a genre based entirely on sampling. They take one thing, and make it into another. Sometimes that thing is better, and sometimes it isn’t. So, the question is do you think sampling music is (for lack of a better word) ethical, and should be respected as an art form?
Was sampling music a point of discussion thread from way back? If not, it should have been. But here it is. I believe music sampling is totally ethical as long as proper credit is given to the original artist, and the sampled music is used to create something new instead of parody. I respect it as an artform because it still requires tons of work, thought, and creativity. However I don't respect it as much as those who play/perform the original music. I believe there is value to knowing how to play an instrument. You don't actually need to know how to play an instrument to create music by sampling.
Hayden wrote:
Did Dilla actually improve the tracks he was sampling, or just changing them? Is this a comparable thing?
I believe when you change a music track by sampling, by definition you're changing its quality. Whether it's an improvement or not is subjective to the listener.
Hayden wrote:
Does an artist’s immolate death affect your perceptions of an album? Also, should it? This question is not supposed to be meant with a negative perception. Personally, I believe that it should, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.
Immolate? Pretty sure you meant the word 'imminent.' To immolate is set yourself on fire, haha. Anyway, yes an artist's impending death can certainly affect perception. J Dilla and David Bowie probably knew Donuts and Blackstar were going to be their final albums. So did they treat them differently from their past albums? As listeners, we'd like to think so, and search for deeper meanings in their final music output. But then again, it's possible Dilla and Bowie treated their farewell albums no different than their past ones.
Hayden wrote:
Challenge/experiment: Now, this is purely for fun and I’m not entirely sure if I’m even expecting anyone to do it. I’m challenging anyone to making a sample based hip-hop instrumental and share it. That’s the challenge. Simple as that. Just wanna see what people come up with. You can send/post them however you want.
I have a bit of a head start here obviously, but I've prepared an untitled hip-hop instrumental that consists of samples from James Brown's It's A Man's World, Lamont Dozier's Don't Stop Playing Our Song, a William Burrough's speech, and the drum pallet is taken from SBTRKT's Wildfire. It's not terribly great, I feel like I couldn't get the drums quite right, but it's all in good fun.
Looking forward to seeing what everyone does
I was surprised how good your sample sounded after you downplayed it. This sounds like fun but I wouldn't know where to begin. If you could direct us to a database or something of sample beats/riffs/sounds/etc, I might try to come up with something if I have the free hours to devote to it.
You're in Windsor. I always pictured you as from Montreal. Fun fact, Windsor is one the few places in Canada where you can look due north at the US.
Immolate? Pretty sure you meant the word 'imminent.
I was surprised how good your sample sounded after you downplayed it. This sounds like fun but I wouldn't know where to begin. If you could direct us to a database or something of sample beats/riffs/sounds/etc, I might try to come up with something if I have the free hours to devote to it.
Yeah, I'm in Windsor temporarily. Funnily enough, over the past few weeks I've been looking into moving to Montreal. I've only been there once on a school trip a number of years ago, but it's a really stellar city.
And I definitely meant imminent That would have been auto-correct. Woops.
And appreciate it It definitely is a bit of fun to try it.. sometimes it's disastrous and extremely frustrating, but it's fun. Honestly, where I begin is simply with listening to albums. That's it. if I come across something that I hear and think "yeah, that could work", then I try and see what I can do. Doesn't really matter what type of record it is either. Of course, this track has R&B/soul samples because I was trying to get some Dilla-ish flavours, but recently I've been working on a few tracks off of these albums:
Give it a skim through and see if anything sparks interest. Kanye took a sample off of here for 'Bound 2' that he got sued over, so if you use anything on here, just don't sell it
Making good music with samples should have the same respect as good music made with real instruments. It takes a nation of millions...or endtroducing etc gives me goosebumps. Some boyband twats who play and write their own shit that sounds awful deserve no respect. Whether its ethical or not to sample I don't care. Just use obscure stuff, get creative and people won't even realise.
As for dilla, he was a fantastic producer but unfortunately I'm not really a massive fan of donuts. So I probably couldn't add much to the discussion on what is a much loved record.
Great write up Hayden and that instrumental you made was good!
Man, this was a joy to read. Will be back later with something more thorough.
EDIT: In answer to the final question - RZA, Pimp C, DJ Quik.
Thanks Skinny. Looking forward to those later thoughts.
RZA's of course a top pick, but DJ Quik is a great choice too. He's always had a great vision of what he wanted his beats to sound like. As far as hip-hop goes, he's definitely just as important as Dr. Dre in creating the west-coast sound.
Quote:
Making good music with samples should have the same respect as good music made with real instruments. It takes a nation of millions...or endtroducing etc gives me goosebumps. Some boyband twats who play and write their own shit that sounds awful deserve no respect.
Great write up Hayden and that instrumental you made was good!
And thanks Graeme2, appreciate it. I thought about bringing up Endtroducing... at some point but decided against it. Despite everything, it's still not really hip-hop, and apart from being sample based, I couldn't really seem to connect it to Donuts.
And your original thought is pretty much the same as mine. If someone knows how to sample a boyband better than the boyband knows what to do with their own song, then all the best to them.
Yep I agree, I don't really see endtroducing as an out and out hip hop record like it can be portrayed by some, where donuts obviously is.
Don't think I'll ever get past Marley marl, bomb squad and RZA being my all time favourites. Though I've been listening to loads of gang Starr recently so premier would have to be high in the list.
Probably about time I gave this record a first isten....
Gotta do that Jimmy. I know you aren't that big into hip-hop, but if anything Donuts is pretty atypical when being compared to the average lot. I think you'd dig at least bits of it. (See if you can catch the ESG sample )
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
That would have been auto-correct. Woops.
It definitely is a bit of fun to try it.. sometimes it's disastrous and extremely frustrating, but it's fun. Honestly, where I begin is simply with listening to albums. That's it. if I come across something that I hear and think "yeah, that could work", then I try and see what I can do. Doesn't really matter what type of record it is either. Of course, this track has R&B/soul samples because I was trying to get some Dilla-ish flavours, but recently I've been working on a few tracks off of these albums:
