So his basement was about this size, and every wall from floor to ceiling was records
categorized. He was a scientist, like if
you opened his refrigerator all the Coke
cans were turned the same way it looked like a graveyard, it was perfect.
e was an engineer in school so there's
a lot of mathematical things going
around in his mind at all times but he
didn't talk a lot.
JayDee had this beat machine landed in his basement and Questlove from the Roots had broken the
beat machine. Yo it started as a
dare, he's like, "Yo man if you can get
that disc out of there you can take this
machine home and use it." So I took it as
a challenge like, "OK, great I'm gonna get some meal, get this outta there." Took the disc out,
he's like, "Aite bet take it home." I made like about four tracks and I called Dilla and...
Jay Dee and I left them on his voicemail and he
called me back and like immediately
he's like, "What was that?" I was like, "You know some of the stuff I was just messing
around with." He's like, "Wow that's pretty
good man play that one again"
Dilla was... I wasn't hearing... Nobody else
was making beats like that you know with
the the snappy snares and then just the
drums and the way he chopped it. So I was
like, "Damn this shit is dope." Plus he
was from Detroit
so it was like the influence was already there.
One day I'll be able to come up with the words
to explain to people what makes, in my eyes,
him the one of the greatest drum
programmers of all time. And I know
people look at me like, "Blasphemy!
There's Premier, there's Pete Rock, there's..."
You know this whole... You know. But I I
will, I will debate it like it's a
presidential debate. I will 
campaign for that guy until the end of time.
He was programming it but it just felt live, the swing of it...
His time signature on that, the way that
he had like the swing percentages on his
beats and shit. He was just clean.
Jay Dee is a pretty brilliant guy, you know.
His stuff is really simple but one of his
brilliant things is sort of... The kick he
chooses where he tunes it and where the
bass is in relation to that. And people
who mix bottom-heavy music you know that
that's like, that's 90% of the battle.
Yeah he was in our world but it was more
like we were in his world. Because it was
just like, "How is he coming to do this so
quick?" Like we're sitting here for hours
just you know chopping, doing all this and
Dilla would just come in and bubu bubu bubu bum
and go back upstairs and you're like, "..."
And looking back on a lot
of the early Tribe stuff and De La Soul
and a lot of the early hip-hop stuff, you
know, from the early 90s there's that feel
that like a lot of us you know we didn't
realize but it was like Jay Dee was behind a
lot of that stuff. His sound was there from back in the day and
I didn't even know about Jay Dee back then, but all I know is that music
was reaching out to me.
I think the one thing I keep going back to about him making Donuts on his death bed,
that speaks volumes to him doing music ten years before that.
OK then you know, "Oh this is a person that's doing music for the sake of doing music.
If you just listen to anything hip-hop J
Dilla is the person that you should
listen to. His catalogue will show you
the complete range of what can be done
with hip-hop music. Like I've said
before to me he's sort of the Michael
Jordan of hip-hop beat making. Dilla was
probably the greatest representation
that I could give to someone to be like,
"This is hip-hop production."
you
