Donuts
by J Dilla
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J Dilla bestography
Donuts is ranked as the best album by J Dilla.
(N.B. Bestographies include all albums by an artist (and their variations), but do not include albums ranked outside the top 100,000).
Listen to Donuts on YouTube
Donuts track list
The tracks on this album have an average rating of 80 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).
Top-rated track as rated by BestEverAlbums.com members.
Donuts rankings
Calculated from aggregate positions across 60,000 charts (2 million album rankings). Click to see how the rankings are calculated (Last updated: 1 hour ago)
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Donuts ratings
Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AVwhere:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.
Showing latest 5 ratings for this album. | Show all 535 ratings for this album.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Album ratings | Avg. album rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ! | 08/08/2026 23:49 | xhitmanx | 1,573 | 75/100 |
| ! | 07/29/2026 09:50 |  Milhaud | 2,148 | 71/100 |
| ! | 07/12/2026 17:36 | liquidbottle | 775 | 82/100 |
| ! | 05/05/2026 20:58 | seaniedimes_ | 74 | 80/100 |
| ! | 04/15/2026 20:35 | Liks_on_music | 656 | 81/100 |
Rating metrics:
Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings)
This album is rated in the top 1% of all albums on BestEverAlbums.com. This album has a Bayesian average rating of 81.3/100, a mean average of 79.8/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 81.5/100. The standard deviation for this album is 17.6.
Donuts favourites
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Donuts comments
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Larcx13 09/06/2024 18:42 | #305160
The tracks are too short to rate this album per track... I also always zone out when I'm listening to this, so I can almost never tell when the track changes... it's as if this album is one giant instrumental track. Maybe it sounds like I'm criticizing it but nope... I'm definitely praising it. This is something else. (Edited)
VictorVale 01/05/2023 21:40 | #292528
Bagunça boa pra porra!
seb7 05/09/2021 17:00 | #269526
Great instrumental album. There is genius and death in those beats.
lo-fi hip-hop pioneer?? (Edited)
Timestarter 02/07/2021 12:31 | #265954
Happy 15th Anniversary To This Album!
Fav. Tracks:
- Workinonit
- Waves
- Light My Fire
- Stop
- The Diff'rence
- Time: The Donut Of The Heart
- Glazed
- One Eleven
- Two Can Win
- Don't Cry
- Anti-American Graffiti
- Dilla Says Go
- Last Donut Of The Night
- Welcome To The Show / Donuts (Intro) (Edited)
planetneutral 01/21/2021 21:33 | #264809
This is cool in and of itself, but it's more resonant when you know something about the context in which it was made.
teague 06/15/2020 23:23 | #253607
Donuts is an incredibly sad last effort by J Dilla. This album is amazing. (Edited)
YEEZY 11/04/2019 00:04 | #244416 | TOP COMMENT
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On the 7th of February 2006, after around 4 months of label disputes J Dilla's 'Donuts' was finally released.
3 days later he was dead.
Donuts is so much more than just a beat tape, it's the final swan-song of a dying man who felt that in his final moments he had to push himself into making something worth being remembered by. 29 out of the 31 tracks were recorded from a hospital bed in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with nothing but an Boss SP-303 small 45 record player his friends had brought him as a gift, Dilla was undergoing treatment for TPP and lupus, records that his mother would bring him were used as the sources of the sampling for the album. It's a common complaint that all of the songs here are too short and fleeting, but to me it's perfect. It's sort of hauntingly symbolic of how life itself is too short and fleeting, but personal meaning aside, every song here is so lush and beautiful, tiny little details are spread across all 31 tracks, it's impossible to listen to them and not hear something new. I wish they could go on forever. I really do.
I am not worthy of listening to this. I can't even believe this thing exists. I listen to this and I think about how terrifying death is, how scared Dilla must have been. there are no words to describe how breathtaking this music is.
fuck.
RIP. (Edited)
One of the records that got me into listening to hip hop music in general.
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