James Dewitt Yancey better known by the stage names J Dilla and Jay Dee, was an American record producer and rapper. He emerged in the mid-1990s underground hip hop scene in Detroit, Michigan, as a member of the group @officialslumvillage He was also a member of the #soulquarians, a musical collective active during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Yancey died at the age of 32 from a combination of TTP and lupus. Although his life and career were short, J Dilla is considered one of the most influential producers in #hiphop. According to @guardian "his affinity for crafting lengthy, melodic loops peppered with breakbeats and vocal samples took instrumental hip-hop into new, more musically complex realms... #wiki Jay Dee would have turned 47 today Donuts began simply enough as an idea to turn a particularly good demo beat tape into a full-length release and has since become a classic hip-hop album, one of the defining works of the artist's life. Completed during a year in which J Dilla spent mostly in a hospital bed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Donuts would gain particular poignancy when, only three days after its release, February 10, 2006, the artist passed away, losing his battle with a rare blood disease. Announced in Fall 2005, the concept of a “rap album without rappers” struck some as a minor novelty, but Donuts would prove to transcend the rigid definitions of what a hip-hop album could be. It plays part like a DJ mix, part like a hip-hop beatmaker at work, its songs starting and stopping unexpectedly, like someone turning the dial on an imaginary radio station. But it's an unmistakably modern album and one which perfectly encapsulated the artist's reputation among his peers and fans as a top-rated architect of soulful hip-hop. #bandcamp You can listen to the whole album on Youtube Music Artist: J Dilla Album: Donuts Follow on Instagram @backfromthecrate . . . #backfromthecrate #beirutcrates #jdilla #jaydee #donuts #vinylrecords #dustyfingers #cratedigger #lebanon (at Beirut, Lebanon) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZrmOtJMnuB/?utm_medium=tumblr