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July 21, 2014 Marina Galperina

The late rapper J Dilla’s custom-made Minamoog Voyager synthesizer has been recently donated to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The synth — along with 11 other objects used by the contributors to American music history, from Chuck Berry to Chuck D — will be shown at the “Musical Crossroads” exhibition, to inaugurate the opening of […]

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May 29, 2014 Andy Cush

Above, watch outtakes from Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton, a new documentary about the legendary underground hip hop label Stones Throw. Kanye West is interviewed and waxes about the influence of the late J Dilla and Stones Throw figurehead Madlib. On Dilla: We gotta make music and we think, ‘If Dilla was alive, would he like this?’ I […]

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April 30, 2014 Andy Cush

“Don’t Cry” is a soulful, melancholy highlight that arrives on the third side of Donuts, the instrumental swan-song from the late hip hop producer J Dilla. To celebrate the music, the blogger Darius Kazemi broke down that beat into its constituent samples — from the Escorts’ “I Can’t Stand to See You Cry” — wrote about […]

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April 17, 2014 Andy Cush

Last month, De La Soul surprise-released Smell the Da.I.S.Y., a collection of vintage De La verses reworked over previously unheard J Dilla beats. Now, they’re doing a limited vinyl release of the late producer’s instrumentals, and, in a continued effort to get more press than they’ve seen since AOI: Bionix, conducting an easter egg hunt of sorts to […]

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August 28, 2013 Andy Cush

Turns out “The Last Donut of the Night” wasn’t the last donut after all. The Detroit News is reporting that Herman Hayes, uncle to the late, impossibly great hip-hop producer J Dilla, will open a donut shop in Dilla’s honor in Detroit’s Harmonie Park. The shop, to be dubbed Dilla’s Delights, will feature all-organic treats with winking names like […]

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August 1, 2013 Andy Cush

Each week in Sample Wars, we’ll pit two songs which sample the same source material head-to-head against each other, to determine which one rocked the sample better. This week’s Sample Wars looks at two of our era’s most titanic musicians: J Dilla and Flying Lotus. “Pie Face,” from FlyLo’s 2010 Pattern + Grid World EP, and “What […]

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May 2, 2013 Andy Cush

Each week in Sample Wars, we’ll pit two songs which sample the same source material head-to-head against each other, to determine which one rocked the sample better. This week’s Sample Wars presents a novel case. Like usual, both Chance the Rapper’s “Everybody’s Something” (released this week on his new mixtape Acid Rap) and Slum Village’s “Fall […]

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April 4, 2013 Andy Cush

Each week in Sample Wars, we’ll pit two songs which sample the same source material head-to-head against each other, to determine which one rocked the sample better. To mark this week’s release of Wolf, Tyler, the Creator’s third album, we’re reaching back to the rapper’s debut. Bastard‘s “Odd Toddlers” draws extensively from “Huit Octobre 1971” by the French fusion […]

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March 21, 2013 Andy Cush

The late J Dilla is one of the most celebrated hip-hop producers of all time, and his enormous record collection is nearly as impressive as his music. In the above documentary from Fuse’s “Crate Diggers” series, producer and friend of Dilla J Rocc gives a short tour of the stash, and friends and family members […]

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