Donuts (album)

Donuts is an instrumental hip hop album by producer J Dilla. Donuts was released on February 7, 2006, his 32nd birthday, and only three days before his death. On Metacritic, Donuts received "universal acclaim" from critics based on an aggregate score of 84/100 from fifteen reviews.^[1]

Creative process

J Dilla had been diagnosed with an incurable blood disease TTP in 2002 and he had also been diagnosed with lupus previously. According to close friend and fellow producer Karriem Riggins the impetus for Donuts came during an extended hospital stay in the summer of 2005. Dilla's friends from the L.A.-based indie label Stones Throw came to visit and brought him a Boss SP-303 sampler and a small 45 record player so he could make music while in the hospital. Dilla completed 29 of the 31 songs on Donuts while still in the hospital.^[2]

In the December 2006 issue of The Fader magazine, J Dilla's mother, Maureen Yancey, who is a former opera singer, spoke of watching her son's daily routine while working on Donuts:

I knew he was working on a series of beat CDs before he came to Los Angeles. Donuts was a special project that he hadn't named yet. This was the tail end of his "Dill Withers" phase, while he was living in Clinton Township, Michigan. You see, musically he went into different phases. He'd start on a project, go back, go buy more records and then go back to working on the project again.

I saw him all day, everyday. I would go there for breakfast, go back to Detroit to check on the daycare business I was running, and then back to his house for lunch and dinner. He was on a special diet and he was a funny eater anyway. He had to take 15 different medications, we would split them up between meals, and every other day we would binge on a brownie sundae from Big Boys. That was his treat.

I didn't know about the actual album Donuts until I came to Los Angeles to stay indefinitely. I got a glimpse of the music during one of the hospital stays, around his 31st birthday, when [friend and producer] House Shoes came out from Detroit to visit him. I would sneak in and listen to the work in progress while he was in dialysis. He got furious when he found out I was listening to his music! He didn't want me to listen to anything until it was a finished product.

He was working in the hospital. He tried to go over each beat and make sure that it was something different and make sure that there was nothing that he wanted to change. "Lightworks", oh yes, that was something! That's one of the special ones. It was so different. It blended classical music (way out there classical), commercial and underground at the same time.^[3]

Aftermath

Dilla's death, three days after the album's release, was widely mourned by the hip hop community, including all those who he worked with in the past and the years closer to his death, especially Detroit's hip-hop community (which included rapper Proof, a friend and associate of Dilla's, who also died 2 months later on April 11).

In regards to the name, "Donuts," The New York Times published an article on Dilla's death, on February 14, 2006, saying:

The record company issued a brief note about the title: Easy explanation. Dilla likes donuts. Yesterday his mother managed a chuckle when she confirmed that fact. I just bought two dozen a week ago, she said.^[4]

Re-use of beats

The tracks "One for Ghost" and "Hi" were used in Ghostface Killah's Fishscale, under the names ""Whip You With a Strap" and "Beauty Jackson", respectively. Ghostface Killah also used "Geek Down" for the song Murda Goons released on his Hidden Darts: Special Edition album. Busta Rhymes and Rah Digga used "Gobstopper" and "Last Donut of the Night" as beats for "Just Another Day at the Range" and "Best That Ever Did It." "Workinonit" was used by The Roots for a collaboration with Saigon for the album Game Theory, however it was not included out of respect for Dilla's passing.^[5] The verse from Saigon can be heard on his mixtape Return of the Yardfather. J Dilla's posthumously released album The Shining, also released with new verses on Common's Finding Forever, uses a re-edited version of "Bye."

The aforementioned tracks were, for the most part, recorded or planned during Dilla's lifetime. After Dilla's passing, The Roots used "Time: The Donut of the Heart" for their J Dilla tribute "Can't Stop This" on the album Game Theory. In 2005, the track "Mash" was rapped over by MF DOOM and Guilty Simpson on the track "Mash's Revenge" feature on the Stones Throw compilation "B-Ball Zombie War". DOOM also used "Anti-American Graffiti" which appeared on the Dilla Ghost Doom release Sniperlite, under the track name "Sniper Elite". DOOM later used "Lightworks" on a track of the same name on his album "Born Like This". "Lightworks" was also used for the "B-Ball Zombie War" track "Lightworking," which features Talib Kweli and Q-Tip. Busta Rhymes added a verse to Q-Tip and Talib Kweli's on "Lightworks". This was included in his Dillagence mixtape, 2007.

Cartoon Network has used many of the album's tracks as bumper music during the Adult Swim programming block. Adult Swim, which has been in a partnership with Stones Throw records, cited the track "Stepson of the Clapper" as their addiction.^[6]

Many notable rappers started to use many of the beats from the Donuts album for mixtape tracks:

• Rapper Termanology also recorded a track titled, "Only One Can Win" using J. Dilla's track "Two Can Win." The song is a tale about a man choosing between rap and a woman. He pays respect to Dilla in the beginning of the song.

• Rapper Talib Kweli has used "Bye." on a track called "I Feel You" from the mixtape "Blacksmith: The Movement" and "Dilla Says Go" on a track called "Kweli Says Go" from the mixtape with Clinton Sparks "Get Familiar".

• Credo used "People" in a track titled, "The Clearing (My People)" on his Dont Give Up The Fight II mixtape.

• Rapper Big Pooh had used "Gobstopper" for a track titled "Plastic Cups" he also used "One Eleven" for a track with the same name featuring O-Dash on a mixtape with Mick Boogie.

• Rapper Ghostface Killah used "One For Ghost" in a song called "Whip You with a Strap" and used "Hi" for "Beauty Jackson" on his album Fishscale. Those two songs were initially created for Ghostface, hence the title "One For Ghost".

• Ghostface Killah also recorded a song called "Murder Goons" over the beat from "Geek Down" in the Fishscale sessions but the song remained unreleased until 2007 when it appeared on Hidden Darts (Special Edition).

• Rapper Drake used "Time: The Donut of the Heart" in a song called "Where to Now" on his mixtape album Comeback Season.

• Rapper Charles Hamilton created a mixtape titled "And Then They Played Dilla" rapping over tracks from Donuts. He also created a sequel, which is named "And Then They Played Dilla 2".

• Peanut Butter Wolf used the song "Mash" as the instrumental for a song called "Mash's Revenge" for his 2007 album "B-Ball Zombie War".

• Rapper Skyzoo has recorded tribute tracks using "Two Can Win" and "Last Donut," among others.

• Rapper Jay Electronica used "Gobstopper" for his track "Abracadabra" and several other Dilla beats for various tracks of his Victory mixtape

• Rapper XV released "Thanks For The Donuts," a tribute EP using J Dilla beats, on February 7th, 2011 (Dilla's birthday as well as the fifth anniversary of Donuts).

Reception

Online music service Rhapsody ranked the album #3 on its "Hip-Hop’s Best Albums of the Decade" list.^[18] "Dilla has always been one of the most stylistically adventurous producers in hip-hop, flipping between the warm, jazzy boom-bap of his earlier years and the colder, more forceful electro of his middle period. But Donuts—in its fractured, ADD glory—presented the producer at his most naked. Culled from a series of beat CDs that had been circulating for some time, most of the songs on Donuts are little more than sketches. Only one song even approaches the three-minute mark, and a few barely even progress beyond simple loops. Though fragments, they collectively offer an intensely personal meditation on the soul music that dominated Dilla’s childhood in Detroit."

The album ranked number 9 on ClashMusic.com's Essential 50 countdown in April 2009.^[19]

In a interview for Pitchfork Media, Panda Bear of Animal Collective stated that Donuts was "By far the album I've listened to most over the past year, and I feel like almost any of the songs off there I could say is my favorite."^[20]

Track listing

1. "Donuts (Outro)" – 0:11
2. "Workinonit" – 2:57
3. "Waves" – 1:38
4. "Light My Fire" – 0:35
5. "The New" – 0:49
6. "Stop" – 1:39
7. "People" – 1:24
8. "The Diff'rence" – 1:52
9. "Mash" – 1:31
10. "Time: The Donut of the Heart" – 1:38
11. "Glazed" – 1:21
12. "Airworks" – 1:44
13. "Lightworks" – 1:55
14. "Stepson of the Clapper" – 1:01
15. "The Twister (Huh, What)" – 1:16
16. "One Eleven" – 1:11
17. "Two Can Win" – 1:47
18. "Don't Cry" – 1:59
19. "Anti-American Graffiti" – 1:53
20. "Geek Down" – 1:19
21. "Thunder" – 0:54
22. "Gobstopper" – 1:05
23. "One for Ghost" – 1:18
24. "Dilla Says Go" – 1:16
25. "Walkinonit" – 1:15
26. "The Factory" – 1:23
27. "U-Love" – 1:00
28. "Hi." – 1:16
29. "Bye." – 1:27
30. "Last Donut of the Night" – 1:39
31. "Welcome to the Show" – 1:12

Samples

• "Donuts (Outro)"
  • "Not Available" by Shuggie Otis ^[21]

• "Workinonit"
  • "The Worst Band in the World" by 10cc^[22]
  • "Sprite 'Melonball Bounce'" by Raymond Scott ^[23]
  • "The New Style" by Beastie Boys ^[24]
  • "King of the Beats" by Mantronix ^[25]
  • "Buffalo Gals" by Malcolm McLaren ^[26]
  • "Pee Wee's Dance" by Joeski Love ^[27]

• "Waves"
  • "Do Ya Thang" by B.R. Gunna ^[28]
  • "Johnny Don't Do It" by 10cc ^[29]
  • "King of the Beats" by Mantronix ^[30]

• "Light My Fire"
  • "Light My Fire" by Africa ^[31]
  • "My Thang" by James Brown ^[32]

• "The New"
  • "Whatcha Gonna Wear Tomorrow" by The Detroit Emeralds
  • "The New Style" by Beastie Boys ^[33]

• "Stop"
  • "You're Gonna Need Me" by Dionne Warwick ^[34]
  • "Why" by Jadakiss featuring Anthony Hamilton ^[35]

• "People"
  • "People Hold On" by Eddie Kendricks ^[36]
  • "King of the Beats" by Mantronix ^[37]
  • "Here We Go (Live at the Fun House)" by Run-D.M.C. ^[38]

• "The Diff'rence"
  • "Fruitman" by Kool & the Gang ^[39]
  • "King of the Beats" by Mantronix ^[40]

• "Mash"
  • "Golden Apple Part 2" by Galt MacDermot ^[41]
  • "Dance Contest" by Frank Zappa ^[42]
  • "Season of the Witch" by Lou Rawls ^[43]

• "Time: The Donut of the Heart"
  • "All I Do Is Think of You" by The Jackson 5 ^[44]

• "Glazed"
  • "You Just Can't Win" by Gene & Jerry ^[45]
  • "Season of the Witch" by Lou Rawls ^[46]

• "Airworks"
  • "I Don't Really Care" by L.V. Johnson ^[47]
  • "Bendix 1: 'The Tomorrow People" by Raymond Scott ^[48]

• "Lightworks"
  • "Bendix 1: 'The Tomorrow People'" by Raymond Scott ^[49]
  • "Lightworks" by Raymond Scott ^[50]
  • "King of the Beats" by Mantronix ^[51]

• "Stepson of the Clapper"
  • "Long Red (Live)" by Mountain ^[52]

• "The Twister"
  • "For Once in My Life" by Stevie Wonder ^[53]
  • "Cloud Nine (Live at the Motortown Revue)" by The Temptations
  • "Buffalo Gals" by Malcolm McLaren ^[54]
  • "Kick the Can (Pt. 1)" by Fred Frith ^[55]
  • "Pee Wee's Dance" by Joeski Love ^[56]
  • "King of the Beats" by Mantronix

• "One Eleven"
  • "A Legend in Its Own Time" by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles ^[57]
  • "Here We Go (Live at the Fun House)" by Run-D.M.C. ^[58]

• "Two Can Win"
  • "Only One Can Win" by The Sylvers ^[59]

• "Don't Cry"
  • "I Can't Stand (To See You Cry)" by The Escorts ^[60]

• "Anti-American Graffiti"
  • "Family Tree" by Tin Tin ^[61]
  • "Pee Wee's Dance" by Joeski Love ^[62]

• "Geek Down"
  • "Charlie's Theme" by The Jimi Entley Sound ^[63]
  • "UFO" by ESG ^[64]

• "Thunder"
  • "Sweet Misery" by Martha Reeves ^[65]
  • "King of the Beats" by Mantronix ^[66]

• "Gobstopper"
  • "To the Other Man" by Luther Ingram ^[67]
  • "King of the Beats" by Mantronix ^[68]

• "One For Ghost"
  • "To the Other Man" by Luther Ingram ^[69]
  • "King of the Beats" by Mantronix ^[70]

• "Dilla Says Go"
  • "Rubber Band" by The Trammps ^[71]
  • "Do Ya Thang" by B.R. Gunna ^[72]

• "Walkinonit"
  • "Walk on By" by The Undisputed Truth ^[73]

• "The Factory"
  • "Animosity" by Fred Weinberg
  • "King of the Beats" by Mantronix ^[74]

• "U-Love"
  • "Just Because I Really Love You" by Jerry Butler ^[75]
  • "Do Ya Thang" by B.R. Gunna

• "Hi."
  • "Maybe" by The Three Degrees ^[76]

• "Bye."
  • "Don't Say Good Night" by The Isley Brothers ^[77]

• "Last Donut of the Night"
  • "To You With Love" by The Moments ^[78]
  • "Rainbow '65 (live)" by Gene Chandler ^[79]

• "Welcome to the Show"
  • "When I Die" by Motherlode ^[80]
  • "Not Available" by Shuggie Otis ^[81]

• "Signs (Bonus Track)" (Released as a 7 Inch) ^[82]
  • "Gimme Little Sign" by Brenton Wood ^[83]
  • "Different Strokes" by Syl Johnson ^[84]

Donuts: J Rocc's Picks

In promotion for the album, Stones Throw released a limited edition EP called Donuts EP: J. Rocc's Picks. This EP contained five extended versions of Donuts instrumentals and the exclusive track, "Signs."

Charts

References