Sunday, February 10, 2013

NPR Music: Why J Dilla May Be Jazz's Latest Great Innovator [Article]


I came across this interesting article on the NPR Music site and decided to post it here on the blog because I feel it's a great read that fits perfectly into the Dilla Day weekend. Read and enjoy!

Why J Dilla May Be Jazz's Latest Great Innovator
by Giovanni Russonello
February 07, 2013

Visionary hip-hop producer J Dilla never found mainstream success during his brief lifetime. But in the seven years since his death, Dilla — who would have turned 39 today — has come to represent a major inflection point on hip-hop's evolutionary tree. At his peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he suggested syntheses that hadn't seemed possible. He played fresh games with texture and tone. He recast the sample as a malleable component, rather than the monochromatic backbone it had seemed to be. And he injected a softened, swaggering humanity into the rigid slap of classic hip-hop drumbeats. READ MORE...

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