Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm

by Dan Charnas

didn’t just skip through the records, “needle-dropping” for interesting parts. He listened to entire songs, listened and listened. His vigilance was almost always rewarded by an element deep within a track. From 9:00 a.m. until noon, he made “beats,” or individual rhythm tracks for rappers to rhyme on or singers to sing over. He created them quickly, one after the other, finished them, and then moved on. At lunchtime, he took a three-hour break. Sometimes he’d use that time to pick up visiting musicians and artists at the airport and take them back to his home studio. Then he’d work again from 3:00 p.m. until 8:00 or 9:00 p.m., and use the rest of the evening to hang out—go eat, go to the strip club—often returning to make more beats. That routine yielded both innovation and a prodigious body of work. J Dilla was prolific, producing hundreds upon hundreds of individual beats.