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

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Based on nearly two hundred original interviews, and filled with graphics that teach us to feel and "see" the rhythm of Dilla's beats, Dilla Time is a book as defining and unique as J Dilla's music itself. Filled with impeccable reportage, elegant prose, and incandescent anecdotes, Dilla Time is more than an urgently needed biography of hip hop’s most revolutionary producer. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

Since his death from a rare blood disease at the age of 32, Dilla has been celebrated with annual “Dilla Day” festivals across the globe and lauded by journalists from NPR to The New York Times. Equal parts biography, musicology, and cultural history, Dilla Time chronicles the life and legacy of J Dilla, a musical genius who transformed the sound of popular music for the twenty-first century.He wasn't known to mainstream audiences, even though he worked with renowned acts like D'Angelo and Erykah Badu and influenced the music of superstars like Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson. Based on nearly two hundred original interviews, and filled with graphics that teachus to feel and to 'see' the rhythm of Dilla's beats, Dilla Time is a book as defining and unique as J Dilla's music itself. written not simply a biography but, rather, an unconventional, journalistic documentation of musical sounds and their progressions in history and culture. In the same way that J Dilla’s music was a portal for us to hear our world, understand our technology, and feel the pulse of life anew, Charnas has made a portal through which to understand our time—historical time, musical time, and James Yancey’s own time—in a new way.

He wasn't known to mainstream audiences, and when he died at age thirty-two, he had never had a pop hit.The cocreator and executive producer of the VH1 movie and TV series The Breaks, he lives in Manhattan and teaches at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Dilla Time is a book that will be read and reread as closely and with as much pleasure as we have listened and relistened to Dilla’s music. He also rewinds the histories of American rhythms: from the birth of soul in Dilla's own Motown, to funk, techno, and disco. An outgrowth of a course on J Dilla he developed at NYU in 2017, the book’s roots go back to Charnas’s time in the record business, when he traveled to Detroit in 1999 to work with the producer then known as Jay Dee.

This is the story of the man and his machines, his family, friends, partners, and celebrity collaborators. He scaled the mountain of Dilla’s complex career and sent back instructions so that others could make the climb.

Yet since his death, J Dilla has become a demigod, revered as one of the most important musical figures of the past hundred years, a genius who transformed the sound of popular music for the Twenty First Century. This book is a must for everyone interested in illuminating the idea of unexplainable genius' - QUESTLOVEEqual parts biography, musicology, and cultural history, Dilla Time chronicles the life and legacy of J Dilla, a musical genius who transformed the sound of popular music for the twenty-first century.