Last week the hip-hop world celebrated the life of Jay Dee aka J-Dilla. Both his birthday and date of death fell in the same week. I first heard his music in 1996 when he began working with A Tribe Called Quest on their fourth album Beats, Rhymes and Life. He had already been working with his group Slum Village in his hometown of Detroit, and apparently stepped to Q-Tip with a tape while Tribe was in town with Lollapalooza. From that point on, Jay Dee became the “producers producer”. Highly acclaimed he worked with the likes of Pharcyde, Busta Rhymes, De …read more

There’s two things I love most about Madvillain, MF DOOM and Madlib.  A force to be reckoned with this duo has been turning up on my playlist time and time again since 2004, the date they released Madvillainy. This gem of a record has some of the best samples and lyrics that you’ll actually stop to listen to. Madlib’s beats hook you in while MF’s lyricism is highly hypnotic. Some call MF’s style lazy but I think he kills it. No matter how slow and burnt out he sounds his rhymes always drop on point. 
What I love even more is …read more