[microphone pops]
PERSON: One, two, one, two.
[switch clicks]
MATS: We got J Dilla in the house...
J DILLA: Yes. MATS: At last.
J DILLA: Yes. MATS: It's an honor.
J DILLA: Yes, man.
Yo, yo, I'm so excited right now.
Everybody who get material from,
you know what I'm saying,
has spoken on this machine right here.
It's like words can't explain it, you know, right now.
This is wild. This is wild.
[sparse electronic music]
♪ ♪
MATS: When I hear your sort of broken-up beats,
when I hear your atmosphere, your version of funk,
I hear almost a new musical style being born in it.
J DILLA: First, thanks, because, um, like,
I guess that's what I try to get across,
you know what I'm saying?
I just wanted to make sure that, um, you know,
if one person can understand, like, what I'm trying to do,
um, with this music thing, and, like, the--
I call it the weirdness.
When it comes out,
I never know what I'm going to do.
I just try to--you know, once I get something going,
just make the best of it.
[J Dilla's "Thunder"]
[crowd cheering]
- J Dilla, the...
- I really...
SNOOP: I was j ust hearing about it,
and hearing about the things he was doing,
and wanted to get with him.
- Nobody snapped on beats like Dilla. Nobody.
PHAT KAT: I knew it was a sound I never heard before.
I knew it was different.
- There's nothing better than that to me.
- There's two phases of Dilla-- the Dilla that the producers
and the music community knew.
DRAKE: There was a time where I wouldn't listen to anything
unless it was produced by Dilla.
JEFF: We knew about his genius
way before the public got a hold of it.
KELLEY: All of the songs that you were dancing to,
that you were singing to,
that you never knew he was in the background.
ROBERT: He wasn't the producer
that's trying to be in the video.
He could literally be in the room
and you wouldn't know,
so it kind of made him more of a underground, dope secret.
BLACK MILK: He barely got any interviews,
barely got video footage,
so it's like it makes the mystique even greater.
- I used to always say, like,
"Man, motherfuckers is not going to catch on to this shit
till we long gone."
[boost converter whines]
FRANK: I had no clue that he was as sick as he was.
Didn't know about the blood disorder,
that death was so close to him.
- He is specifically saying,
"I just want to finish my work."
- It's a shame that he didn't have the recognition
during his life.
KELLEY: I think that people really missed out
on what his imprint was.
MARTHA: I can't talk about him
without talking about his music
because it was very much his life.
- My purpose is to make sure that James' life
and his life's work was not in vain.
JOHN: Realistically,
when it comes to my brother's legacy...
MC AND CROWD: Rest in peace, J Dilla!
[crowd cheering]
- It don't belong to anyone but James Dewitt Yancey.
J DILLA: I'm just a average kid in Detroit
nobody--you know, nobody knows, really.
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[thump]
MATS: How much has it meant for your music making
the sort of, um, lost hope
Motown moving to Los Angeles...
J DILLA: Right.
MATS: The car factories being abandoned...
J DILLA: Mm-hmm.
MATS: How much has that meant for your music?
J DILLA: Oh, um--
"Welcome 2 Detroit"] [J Dilla's
♪ Welcome to the D, baby ♪
That is--ooh.
♪ It's all live down here ♪
ARCHIVE NARRATOR: Detroit is the best big city
in the country.
♪ What you see is all real ♪ J DILLA:
ARCHIVE NARRATOR: It's a city with the widest range
that you can imagine. of people
J DILLA: ♪ J Dilla about to set it the fuck off ♪
♪ ♪
Disappointment is one of the driving forces
that keeps me going.
- We are announcing the closing of 11 plants.
ARCHIVE NARRATOR: It is now called the murder capital
of the United States.
ARCHIVE NARRATOR: Mile after mile of decaying.
J DILLA: Jobs being lost,
so much, you know, day-to-day life,
you know, real life. You know, people--
homeless situation in Detroit you know, the
and the--the crime rate, you know, is crazy.
- Like a whole generation is being wiped out.
ARCHIVE NARRATOR: The worst race riots in U. S. history.
- The neighborhoods collapsed
the goddamn population left. because half
J DILLA: It's like, to go in the basement
and do something that you love to do
and create something that's positive
and that's my only outlet to take me away
from all of the crazy stuff.
- What y'all doing? - Documentary.
- Yup.
- I am.
[laughter]
[engines chugging]
[horn honks] [record scratches]
[energetic jazz music]
- Which camera? PRODUCER: You'll look at me.
- Look at you? Okay.
Frame that.
We in Detroit City,
just outside of the Conant Gardens neighborhood
close to the Eight Mile.
I can't come to Detroit and not be at my mama's house.
I tell her I'm getting a hotel, we might have to fight.
♪ ♪
Conant Gardens, it was basically
a Black, middle-class area--
Black churches, schools, businesses.
It was, um, the Cleavers, or at least our version of it.
Big, beautiful homes, upper-middle-class living
that's mostly Black folk.
Real quick, Dilla's house is right here
on the corner right here.
There's a lot of things that people believe is fact,
and it adds to his mystique.
It keeps him, you know, as a interesting figure.
I think in any good story, there's that speculation
'cause people want to know.
MATS: Let's trace your roots. Uh...
How did you grow up?
J DILLA: Music all in the house.
Uh, Detroit.
[peaceful hip-hop beat]
As a--as a youngster...
FRANK: I met Dilla in 1986.
Walking to school, the first friend I made
was Dilla's adopted brother.
And he was like, "Hey, man.
You need to meet my brother, James."
me and Dilla met. And that's how
Became homeboys. That was it.
Just kind of bonded on hip-hop--
the Whodinis, The Fat Boys, you know, Salt-N-Pepa.
I mean, he was always a different kid
than the rest of us, right?
I'll put it to you this way.
Sixth, seventh grade, kids carried backpacks.
Dilla had a briefcase.
[peaceful jazz music]
MARTHA: We were nerds, the whole house,
a bunch of nerds.
And James was really smart.
Like, straight As.
We're very family-oriented.
Especially, like, me and James were,
that we're not social, that we're awkward,
that we're teased a little bit.
I don't think James ever felt okay
about his awkwardness or his bashfulness.
I think that he hated it,
hated how uncomfortable he was around people, period.
JOHN: All these family gatherings, like,
that's the first thing that comes to mind
and, um, you know, us watching movies together.
Like, I'm talking old-school VHS, you know what I mean?
The whole VHS collection in the basement.
I just remember it was, like,
a lot of creativity in our household.
Honestly, growing up, like,
really was a creative household.
J DILLA: My father was, um, you know,
he listened to Jack McDuff with a mixture of James Brown.
Then my mother was an opera singer and going to church.
And my sister was listening to whatever was on the radio.
All of that paid off
and all of the music lessons and the classes
that my mother and father forced me to go to.
MARTHA: My dad had groups
who would come to the house and sing.
And they would go out and perform.
Two of the people worked with my dad
at Ford Motor Company,
and then my mom.
That was the group.
He'd had a record contract
and he's cut albums.
And so they would have, like, rehearsals at the house.
So music was constant.
J DILLA: It's like my father
was just getting into the game.
Pictures with--show me pictures with Berry Gordy.
And it's--it's crazy. Like--
MAUREEN: The record shop was James' favorite place.
He got a chance to go every Friday.
His dad got off work and would take him there as a treat.
J DILLA: He used to buy me 45s.
And I remember the first album I bought
was Kool & The Gang's Open Sesame.
I remember buying that album in the store
and going home and putting on Open Sesame.
And it blew my mind.
FRANK: At home, he's listening to jazz and gospel.
He's singing gospel. You know what I'm saying?
But when it came down to us as a crew,
it was super, duper hip-hop.
Run-D.M.C., Big Daddy Kane, you know, hip-hop.
J DILLA: In Detroit, hip-hop was very underground,
you know what I'm saying?
It was looked at as weird.
You know, and we were, like, strange to people.
[breezy hip-hop beat]
When I got to, like, 13, 14 years old,
you know, I got my turntables for Christmas,
which moved to DJing.
I used to just take people's records and,
you know, pause and record,
you know, making little patterns with it
like an old car wash record with a funky drummer.
And after a while, you know, I figured out like, "Damn it.
"Maybe I can, um, you know,
make my own little patterns with these records."
You know what I'm saying?
So started doing little beats like that.
FRANK: When we was 13, 14,
he took apart his-- his cassette deck
to be able to do his beats on his dual cassette.
But he wanted to be able to slow down the samples
that he was recording from or speed up the sample,
so he tore down the cassette and found the screw
that actually controlled that.
I remember coming in, walking in the door,
and saying, "What happened to the tape deck?"
Because it was-- the cover was off
and I could just see all the guts.
And he was like, "Oh, no. This straight.
I just needed to-- so I can do this."
♪ ♪
"What? You did what?"
"Yeah, the screw right here, turn that, speed up, see?"
[imitates music speeding up]
"Now it slow down." Like...
"Yo, like, what's wrong with you, bro?"
And that was him.
Like, once I lock into a situation,
I'm going to figure it out.
♪ ♪
MAUREEN: At that time, I knew he was gifted.
But I know so many people that were gifted
that never, ever got out the door.
And--and that was my fear.
His dad had been in music 25 years.
He never made it like that.
J DILLA: I hear my father talk about it
and I always ask him, like,
sign with someone? why didn't you
Or why didn't you--
I don't even think he can explain.
You know, it's just kind of like one of those situations
where it just never happened, so I learned from that.
♪ ♪
I can't stop, you know, not even for myself.
But, you know, I have to-- I have to do this,
you know what I'm saying, you know,
for my father, you know what I'm saying?
Get him proud--make him proud
and you know, for the rest of my family.
- Dilla was a rare breed of producer
that gave you a human feel in a technicalorld.
[old-school hip-hop beat]
- I remember being in LA and I was driving
and it was the first time that I heard "I Don't Know."
[Slum Village's "I Don't Know"]
♪ ♪
- And I thought the collection of James Brown samples
and the way that that was put together
was probably one of the most ingenious things
that I ever heard,
not only in hip-hop, but in music.
JEFF: And I remember calling the radio station
and said, "What is this?"
And they were like,
"This is a group out of Detroit, Slum Village.
But this is J Dilla, the producer."
And I was like, "I need that immediately."
[thump] [record scratches]
J DILLA: When I started pause and record beats,
I was also writing rhymes.
I heard about T3 and Baatin.
And they went to another high school.
So I'm like, "Okay. One day, we gonna go up and challenge."
But we ended up taking a trip to a record store
and buying some breakbeat albums
and it turned into us
seeing the differences in all three of us
and what we could be as one.
[crowd cheering]
- Make some noise for Slum Village!
[crowd cheering] Slum Village!
- My name-- I go by the name of T3.
This is my man, Baatin, right here.
I've got to introduce one more man in my group.
[crowd yelling] You know what I'm saying?
That's my man Jay Dee right here.
[crowd cheering]
[Slum Village's "Get Dis Money"]
♪ ♪
TOGETHER: ♪ Hey, hey, hey, h-hey, hey ♪
♪ What you say? ♪
♪ Get this party ♪
- I think that that was a big change for him,
actually meeting Baatin and T3.
I absolutely loved them together.
I did.
[dramatic drum roll]
HOST: Joseph "Amp" Fiddler is an American keyboardist,
sound designer, singer/songwriter,
and record producer from Detroit, Michigan, USA.
He's probably best known as part
of George Clinton's Parliament and Funkadelic groups
from 1985 to 1996.
[dramatic electronic music]
So what is probably missed out in Wikipedia pages
is Amp Fiddler taught Dilla how to make beats.
AMP: That is missing, isn't it?
We have to put it there.
He would knock on my door with Slum Village
and four or five other kids
and ask if he can work in the basement.
And I said, "So am I making the beats for you?
Am I producing this or--"
and they said "No, James can make the beats."
He came in and played them for me.
And he had created them with cassette players.
And he just kept dubbing from one cassette to another
until he got the track done.
And I said, "Damn, well, if you could do that,
"then I can show you that
"you can take those same samples
and put them in the MPC and sample them and make a track."
FRANK: Amp was kind of the first
where you got kind of a professional experience.
And also for Dilla,
that's where Dilla really learned how to use the MPC60.
ROGER: Technology has just taken a giant leap forward.
Hello, I'm Roger Linn
and this is the MPC60 Midi Production Center.
JEFF: There's been a bunch of MPCs.
Like, Dilla was a MPC3000 king.
An MPC is a sampling drum machine,
so you can put drums in it and you can program drum beats.
But you also can sample from live instruments to records
to you saying something on a microphone
and put it on all of the pads and rearrange them
and play a completely different composition.
It's really a band in a box.
J DILLA: I say don't read books.
When you get equipment, say, just, learn the machine
and it'll do what you need it to do.
If I would've read the book, I don't think
I would be, you know,
on the same path that I'm on right now.
I think my music might sound totally different.
AMP: The first song that we made
was called "Ghost Town to the Break of Day."
[Slum Village's "Ghost Town to the Break of Day"]
[old-school hip-hop beat]
TOGETHER: ♪ Ghost town to the break of day ♪
♪ Ghost town to the break of day ♪
♪ Get off my jiggity-- ♪
[energetic jazz music]
FRANK: What he did with the machine,
he shifted timing.
It made it feel different.
- Now I'd like to talk more about
the Timing Correct feature.
- All of these drum machines have a autocorrect on it.
I can push a button
and it'll make it perfect. [angelic choir sings]
There is not a human being
on this Earth that is perfect.
What Dilla did that made him special
equipment that you can make is he took a piece of perfect
and he added a human element to it.
When you listen to his beat,
you didn't get him pushing the button to make it perfect.
You got it exactly how he played it.
You got it exactly how he wanted you to receive it.
J DILLA: Like, I get that
from listening to old drummers, Bernard Purdie,
you know, Idris Muhammad.
I mean, like, drummers like that had funk, soul.
It was like you can hear when they fucked up, basically,
in rhythm and timing.
It was still funky. You know what I'm saying?
It's like they still kept a beat.
It's hard to explain,
but I try to do that through the MP.
[hi-hat tapping]
♪ ♪
- So that's me playing the hi-hat in my natural rhythm.
This is the best to my ability
of me playing this hi-hat on the beat.
[snare and kick playing]
♪ ♪
So if you listen to this...
the kick and the snare is off a little bit.
It fits.
But it's exactly how I played it.
But if I wanted to fix it, if I pick that...
[percussion perfectly on-beat]
But to me, that took all of the feel out of it.
This is very robotic.
Now, what I love about it and what he was very good at
is, if this wasn't exactly where he wanted it to be,
he could erase something and do it again.
And I think the people that were
trying to mimic what Dilla was doing
was looking for the feature.
They were almost looking for the Dilla button,
and the Dilla button is inside.
[upbeat hip-hop music]
♪ ♪
- ♪ What the fuck you wanna do? What the fuck? ♪
♪ What the fuck you wanna do? Take it out, y'all ♪
♪ Yo, yo, everybody in the house ♪
♪ Just raise your hands up in the air ♪
- I just became obsessed with that sound
and what they was doing as a group.
And, of course, Dilla was-- how do you explain that?
Like, he was a star. You know what I'm saying?
In the sense of, like, ability and skill set,
he was bigger than the group,
bigger than life, you know what I'm saying,
in terms of what he was doing musically.
♪ ♪
TOGETHER: ♪ Oh, ah, oh-ah, oh-ah ♪
Q-TIP: I was on Lollapalooza tour in '94.
So we started on the tour.
This brother with a crazy, big afro came by.
It was Amp Fiddler
and he was playing keyboards for Funkadelic.
And he was just like, "Yo,
"I got this kid I really want you to hear.
"You're going to love him. He loves you.
"He looks up to you so much.
I want you to meet him when we get to Detroit."
- A Tribe Called Quest are at the top of their game.
Sonically, musically,
they really were kind of like the group that
a whole generation looked to.
Q-Tip, I think you have to say,
is one of the most innovative hip-hop producers.
Q-TIP: We had like 12 cities to get to Detroit.
And each day, he would still come
and say the same thing to me. [laughter]
Like, "Yo, man.
Detroit's coming up, dude, like--"
[laughter]
- And then when the tour stopped here,
he got Dilla some tickets
and they went up to see the show.
Q-TIP: I remember Dilla had on some glasses.
And he came on smiling.
The first thing I saw was his smile.
He was like, "Oh, man. Oh, man."
I was like, "Oh, what's up, man?"
He gave me his tape personally.
FRANK: That opened up ears to Dilla.
That tape was a tape
that circulated through the industry.
It started their platform,
the platform outside of Detroit.
[peaceful music]
PHAT KAT: We in the studio recording.
And he step out of the studio.
And he comes back in like, "Man,
man, you won't believe who that was."
I'm like, "Who?"
He's like, "Man, that was Q-Tip.
You know what I'm saying? I'm like, "What?"
Q-TIP: I called the house, his house.
I was like, "Yo, man.
"People got to hear your shit somehow.
We got to figure something out. We got to work, man."
- We looked at that shit like it was a sign.
Like, you know, like this shit is about to go down.
MAUREEN: You know, he'd be excited.
But what his excitement was was simply this--
in his head.
Would not utter a word, just like--
J DILLA: Tip got me out to New York,
and he wanted to manage me
but he didn't know where to even start.
He just was like, "Yo, I got to get you out here."
I'm going to the studio, you know,
Pharcyde is down the hall, Common is in another room,
The Roots, you know, all of these people I'm listening to.
MARTHA: It just didn't seem real
because he's still very young.
What was he, 20 maybe? 20 years old?
J DILLA: Like you know,
he used to ask me opinions on things.
You know, for me to say that, you know,
it's kind of weird because, like I said,
I'm a Tribe Called Quest fan. You know, every album.
To even get a call back from that man
you know, and to be taken serious--
I was there.
See, I tell people I felt like I was a part
of A Tribe Called Quest.
ALI: Yeah, he was in our world.
But it was more like we were in his world
because it was just like,
how does he come in and do this so quick?
Like, we're sitting here for hours,
just chopping, doing all this.
And Dilla would just come in and boop, boop, boop, boop,
boop, boop, boop, boop, boom, and go back upstairs.
And you're like--
[laughter]
I've been sitting here for weeks and months
trying to achieve that, what he just did in minutes.
[jazzy hip-hop beat]
♪ ♪
MIKE: First time I heard of Dilla beat
was when Tre and The Pharcyde were in New York
recording with New York hip-hop producers.
- This is The Pharcyde.
MIKE: Pharcyde's first record is successful.
They're getting MTV play.
The sophomore album is always a big album for any group.
And we didn't really have a producer.
[soft dramatic music]
So they get in the studio.
And Q-Tip happened to be working with this young kid
named Jay Dee.
♪ ♪
I remember Tre from The Pharcyde
calling me and saying, "Mike, listen to this beat."
And it was the "Runnin'" beat.
[The Pharcyde's "Runnin'"]
[mellow hip-hop beat]
I said, "Well, come back to LA now.
I think we have our producer."
J DILLA: The Pharcyde, "Runnin'," that song,
first songs that a major label that was one of the
gave me an opportunity to go out
and do what I want to do.
- Dilla took that approach of grabbing samples
and turned it into a musical form.
[record scratching]
[mellow jazz music]
He added a little bit more sophistication
to the music side of these records.
He added a really dope landscape
to what the rappers were rapping off of.
This is Stan Getz.
[mellow jazz music]
So he sampled this part.
♪ ♪
So if you hear lute--
♪ ♪
[light record scratching]
[mellow hip-hop beat]
And that's how he used it.
element is what made it seep Him adding that musical over
into all genres of music and, you know,
that his impact wasn't just in hip-hop.
His impact was musically all the way across the board.
[The Singers Unlimited's "Clair"]
[upbeat whistling]
[mellow music]
This is one of my favorites.
This is The Singers Unlimited, "Clair."
SINGER: ♪ Hard as I might do ♪
♪ I don't know why ♪
[slowing down] ♪ You get to me in a way I can't describe ♪
♪ The words mean so little when you look up and smile ♪
[pitched down] ♪ I don't care what people say to me ♪
♪ You're more than a child ♪
♪ Oh, Clair ♪
♪ Clair ♪
[record scratches]
[hip-hop beat]
♪ Clair ♪
T3: ♪ It's the 788-- ♪
- And then-- and then it's--
SINGER: ♪ Claire ♪
T3: ♪ Don't let the drama fluctuate ♪
This wasn't even a music JEFF: sample.
These are human voices that he tuned
in a way to create the music bed for "Players."
And the song is called "Clair."
Everybody in the world thinks they're saying "players."
Genius.
He used everything at his disposal.
That was the joy of it, of the discovery,
and he did it better than all of us.
- I ran into Dilla at Q-Tip's house.
And he was like, "Dilla's downstairs."
And Dilla was-- I went downstairs.
He was just downstairs behind the turntable
playing records and messing just with records, just around.
[upbeat music]
And then we put together The Ummah.
Ummah was a collection of producers.
Ummah came to be through Kamaal, Q-Tip.
Q-TIP: The Ummah was supposed to be D'Angelo, myself,
Ali, Raphael Saadiq, and Dilla.
FRANK: It was a collective.
It would just say produced by The Ummah,
which could have been produced by Q-Tip,
or Ali Shaheed, or Dilla.
- It was intentionally a little bit opaque,
what exactly The Ummah credit meant.
J DILLA: I just wanted to be a part of the movement
of what they were doing.
And I say it was just all exciting.
I was just going with the flow,
rolling with the punches,
and, you know, taking it as it came.
EDWIN: After a few 12-inches had come out,
there's this piece in Vibe magazine
by Jeff Mao, known as Chairman Mao.
[energetic electronic music]
That is kind of the first window
that hip-hop fans, I think, have into who Jay Dee is.
MIKE: Then all of a sudden, he's caught up in a wave.
You know, he's off to the races.
♪ ♪
Fucking genius.
What a fucking--pfft.
♪ ♪
- I first got exposed to Dilla's music--
yeah, I remember exactly.
I was at my friend's house.
And he played this Busta Rhyme album.
And the song came on.
"Still Shining" it was called. "Still Shining."
I was like, "Wait, what is this?"
[Busta Rhymes' "Still Shining"]
♪ ♪
- He used to send me a beat CD and be like,
"These are the beats that nobody can rhyme to."
And it'll be the most off-the-wall, left-field,
groundbreaking-sounding beats,
and that was what would challenge me to write.
That song took me about a week and a half to write.
I ain't never take that long to write a song in my life.
♪ Just a moment, let me take a breather ♪
♪ Got you niggas sweatin' cold like you caught the fever ♪
- Sound like no other hip-hop beat I've ever heard
because the chord changes and how it was moving
and it never really repeated,
almost like a live drummer's playing, listening to a rapper.
That's what it felt like.
And then years later, I got a chance to ask.
I was like, "On 'Still Shining,'
did Dilla put the drums after you laid your verse?"
He was like... [doing impression] "No, son!"
[laughing] "The drums was already there!"
- When I wrote the rhyme, I had to write the rhyme
to the way the drum pattern was going.
If the part was only two or three seconds long,
I would have to keep rewinding that part
until I figured out how to match
the wordplay pattern to go exactly
with the production pattern.
- That's even more crazy,
the fact that he did those drums like that
without a rapper.
Like, that's just-- it just doesn't get better.
You know what I mean? But Dilla got that done.
Psh.
TONI: And Best Rap album the Grammy goes to the artist
and to the album producers the nominations are...
Beats, Rhymes, and Life, ANNOUNCER:
a Tribe called Quest.
Producer: The Ummah.
[thump]
J DILLA: When I look at it, it's like, damn.
You know, it's like, one, two, three, four,
five tracks on a Tribe album.
You know what I'm saying? It was unbelievable.
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
FRANK: After that, Dilla was working, busy.
His life advanced as the money advanced.
♪ ♪
[slate claps]
[soft upbeat music]
- Yep.
Dilla was kind of unmanaged at the time.
And I moonlit for a lawyer named Micheline Levine
for some years.
Micheline represented Funkmaster Flex,
Tribe Called Quest,
and so I think Dilla came to her by way of Q-Tip and Ali.
Micheline was hired to handle Dilla's transactions.
That was Micheline's formal role.
Arty Erk was a lifetime music-business accountant.
He worked with a number of Micheline's clients.
He was the one who was having to think about
you know, saving, structure, taxes, all of that stuff.
You know, what were the rates?
How do you keep them consistent?
What's his back-end participation?
You know, all of the, kind of, technical details
of negotiating those deals became more and more important
as he was more and more in demand.
There was plenty of money flowing in.
KELLEY: I first started covering music in Detroit.
I remember one of the rappers in D12, Denaun Porter,
telling me this, that everything changed
when Jay Dee pulled up in a green Jaguar.
And they were like, "Oh, wait.
You can make money from this."
[energetic jazz music]
FRANK: In the beginning,
The Ummah, it was an incredible thing.
It was an accomplishment.
A good little while we rolled it around
with a license plate that had "The Ummah" on the back.
SINGER: ♪ It's a party, let's get it on tonight ♪
♪ That's how we flow ♪
♪ Gonna rock your body ♪
FRANK: For most of those records that he put out,
a lot of them said The Ummah.
♪ ♪
[soft dramatic music]
J DILLA: The Ummah thing kind of, you know, covered it up.
You know, and the first couple of years, it was exciting.
It was still cool.
And you know, The Ummah thing, I felt like this was
another Tribe Called Quest on the production,
you know what I'm saying, instead of J.
So it's like, you know--
RAPHAEL: Certain records I didn't know that he did.
Because he was pretty--
he's pretty quiet about what he was doing.
♪ ♪
He really did the work.
The Ummah, at some point,
I think the shadow was a little large for him.
- We got The Ummah in the studio.
♪ ♪
HOUSE SHOES: Everybody in the scene
listened to our fucking radio show, yo.
It was fucking amazing, yo. We had all the heat.
♪ ♪
We talked about The Ummah shit and all that.
So he would be upset about that shit from time to time.
"Fuck that, my name ain't on the records."
- It got to the point of
everybody thought Tip did the beats,
that he rhymed on it,
and everybody thought the remixes and--
I did interviews and they asked me questions like,
"Yeah, so Tip did this and that."
I'm like, "No, I did that," you know what I'm saying?
- And he wasn't saying jack shit.
- So it was like, yeah, after a while,
it got to be frustrating, you know what I'm saying?
It just led to tension.
neglecting your solo project MAUREEN: And you
because you constantly making the beats,
but you're putting The Ummah stuff up first.
[A Tribe Called Quest's "Get A Hold"]
♪ ♪
J DILLA: It kind of affected me because
I'm like, "Damn, you know, like, maybe I shouldn't have--
"you know, maybe I shouldn't have got
involved with the Tribe album."
But you know, that was the only way
that I knew how to get heard, you know what I'm saying,
at that time.
Q-TIP: ♪ The deadly venom ♪
♪ Let me start from the beginnin' ♪
- His music was to become a brand, become a staple.
[soft dramatic music]
He felt as though people needed to know this is me.
I want that credit.
If I want you to come to my house to buy my goods,
you need to know exactly where my house is.
And at some point, I think that became his fight.
♪ ♪
[soft dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- After a while, I said, "Well, how does it feel?
"Like, you work with all these people that you love.
And you know, how do you feel?"
He's like, "It seems like work now."
♪ ♪
JOHN: The whole fame thing was definitely
not an attraction to James.
He's not trying to have people in his face.
Like, people have invited him to video shoots
and all kinds of stuff.
He's like "No, that's all good.
I'd rather stay at home."
FRANK: He was a private guy.
I like being in my warm, relaxing bubble
and making beats and making people happy
and making money that way.
Fame was just a function of achieving the goal.
It was not the goal.
MAUREEN: He was too much of a introvert.
He didn't like taking pictures, not even for the family.
♪ ♪
FRANK: Probably around '97, '98
is when he really was like, you know what, Frank,
I ain't leaving no more.
They gonna have to come here and work.
♪ ♪
And before you know it, everybody was there.
- One by one, they come to Detroit
to kind of see what he's doing.
So that includes Common.
It also includes Black Thought from the Roots.
Busta Rhymes and other people start
making the trip out there.
- So many people.
MAUREEN: It would be people lined up all along that fence
and around the front waiting for Dilla.
Artists called it "the basement."
[record whirs]
J DILLA: I'm still in the basement, you know?
I keep it in the basement.
MATS: I really want to know how it looks in your basement.
[mellow music]
J DILLA: Posters everywhere and old records on the wall,
you know, things like that.
Just to give it the-- give it the soul feel.
♪ ♪
So when I go in the basement, that's all I see.
I just see these records all over the wall.
So when I go make my music, I don't know,
it just-- something comes out.
♪ ♪
JONATHAN: So Dilla was in Detroit.
We were in New York.
Everybody relied heavily on Micheline for her expertise
and her guidance.
Micheline relied heavily on Maureen
for managing what was happening in Detroit.
- I was always mom manager, always Detroit management.
[laughs] That was what he called me.
JONATHAN: Because of the physical distance between us,
it was never entirely clear what was happening.
It turns out that Dilla or Maureen
had done a side deal with somebody in Detroit,
we'd clean it up, but you know, at the height of it,
Dilla was probably getting,
I don't know, maybe $60,000, $75,000 a track,
something like that.
Um, but if you called him on the first of the month,
uh, you might get a track for 5 or 10 grand.
So Micheline, Arty, and I worked very closely together
to kind of pull the pieces together.
And we did our best to corral it, take care of it.
But, you know, it wasn't something
we were completely in control of.
♪ ♪
EDWIN: Almost parallel to the same pattern of interest
from Q-Tip, like The Ummah,
you have a similar kind of pattern
with the Soulquarians.
♪ ♪
Questlove, the drummer for The Roots, and D'Angelo
get really excited about what Jay Dee is doing
with the rhythms, the way he's using samples.
J DILLA: It was so weird how this happened.
Ahmir knew that he was, you know,
of course he was Aquarius.
And he knew James Poyser Aquarius...
INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm. J DILLA: And D'Angelo was.
So he thought that was bizarre.
INTERVIEWER: That's logical.
- Right, he thought that was bizarre.
Then when we just happened to talk one day in a session,
like, he found out I was Aquarius.
So he was like, whoa.
That was it.
EDWIN: Neo soul is really a tag, I think,
that was put onto the output of the Soulquarians.
ROBERT: If you ask me what neo soul is,
it's Dilla-influenced R&B.
[laughs]
You know what I mean? It's kind of like smoothed out,
more hip-hop influenced R&B.
But the hip-hop they're influenced by
is really from the J Dilla school.
♪ ♪
- Ah, ha, ha. There.
- Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
♪ ♪
COMMON: Dilla would create a lot in his basement.
It was this house where he grew up.
I really enjoyed going to his house to work
because we have fun.
Dilla would be going through records.
And it was part of--I just enjoyed the journey of like,
okay, what are we gonna get now?
What are we gonna-- what is he gonna create?
What is he gonna come up with?
And it was almost--
it was like a challenge/fun/inspiration.
So I loved that process.
ROBERT: This sound was very new.
- I want it to be something else.
COMMON: For the what?
- Just for bass to use.
COMMON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ROBERT: And Like Water for Chocolate was the best version
of that sound.
And it was one of the first versions of that sound
to really hit the world.
Common and Dilla were made for each other.
That was a match made in heaven.
[Common, "The Light"]
MAUREEN: I love Common's "The Light."
♪ There are times when you need someone ♪
♪ I will be by your side ♪
Yeah, that one.
BOBBY: ♪ There are times when you need someone ♪
COMMON: ♪ Yeah ♪
BOBBY: ♪ I will be by your side ♪
COMMON: ♪ What's up? What's up? ♪
BOBBY: ♪ There is a light that shines ♪
♪ Special for you and me ♪
COMMON: ♪ Yo, yo ♪
[soft music]
MATS: You're really the link between, uh,
the high tech stuff, swampy, technology stuff...
J DILLA: Yeah.
MATS: And the neo soul movement.
You're the link.
J DILLA: Damn. Damn.
That's a big compliment to hear.
Um, I don't feel like I--
like I, um, originated that, I guess you could say.
I just--I think that my little, you know,
weird influences may have brought something to that,
you know what I'm saying, to that soul movement.
FRANK: He was always a shy guy.
As a young kid, he was shy.
You know, he stuttered.
He chose his words wisely as a young man.
He measured, he was very tempered in what he did.
He was never the guy who needed to stand out
and let everybody, ooh, look at me.
MAUREEN: I would get upset.
I said you work so hard,
you're helping all these people.
And you're helping them get their stuff together.
You know, why haven't you been offered this?
And he just looked at me,
he said, "Lady"--
which he called me when I get a little strong, headstrong--
it's a time for everything.
It's a time for everything.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
JOHN: I know for the MCA deal,
that was his chance to show his range, really.
That was supposed to be his, like,
yo, this the big J Dilla solo album.
KENNY: ♪ You're so precious like a burst of joy ♪
♪ I heard your boy Jacob got the best shit ♪
♪ You so hot, you make me hot, boy ♪
♪ And he's got you 'round the whole watch, boy ♪
J DILLA: Like, what I want to do is bring my thing in
as did Dre, as did Rza,
as Timbaland, you know what I'm saying?
I would like to bring my own sound.
KENNY: ♪ The feeling is priceless ♪
- Dilla had signed a deal with MCA that
was an artist deal, a 12-song producer deal,
and a label deal.
EDWIN: Dilla got a big check.
Basically what he does with that big lump sum of money
that comes is build a new studio for himself.
[hip-hop music]
- Dilla's studio, it's like, be ready to lay some hot shit,
or you will not get in.
- We're in Dilla's studio, Frank-N-Dank, J Dilla.
Y'all know how we entertain. It's the essence.
- Dilla's house right here now. This is not a game.
This is the real deal.
EDWIN: Right off the bat, he starts working with
Frank-N-Dank were kind of his long term,
uh, collaborators in Detroit.
[J Dilla and Frank-N-Dank's "Take Dem Clothes Off"]
FRANK-N-DANK: ♪ Yeah, Frank-N-Dank, y'all ♪
MIKE: That's all his crew, you know?
He's spinning off records and making records
with his homies.
♪ ♪
FRANK: It was T3 and Baatin from Slum Village and Dilla
who came up with the idea that Frank-N-Dank
should actually be a rap group.
Obviously, I'm the Frank half of Frank-N-Dank.
Dank is my brother.
MAUREEN: He told Dank, tell your mom
'cause, you know, you're gonna you gotta quit your job do this
and I got you, and he held his word.
He took care of them.
- Exclusive, so make sure you all get online.
MAUREEN: They shared everything.
You know, it was like, to be successful,
his boys were gonna be successful with him.
- Do you know about the rules, nigga,
that we put on the website?
The rules of Dilla studios?
- Oh, that's what they say.
- Nigga say, don't come late.
Don't fall in love with no beats 'cause he will
cut that motherfucker off with no ask.
[laughter] Click that motherfucker.
FRANK: We recordin' to his sound that he was known for.
But he changed the sound mid-album,
like really stripped all the beats that we had recorded to
and made new beats under our vocals.
♪ ♪
It was a choice of his. It was a style change.
KARRIEM: I think that's around the time
he kind of was dealing with the more electro-sounding stuff.
[Frank-N-Dank's "Off Ya Chest"]
FRANK-N-DANK: ♪ Yeah, Frank-N-Dank ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Uh, J Dilla ♪
- People who knew who Dilla was and his catalog
has seen him change his style five or six times.
People started gravitating to what he was doing.
And he was like "Okay, I'ma make a left turn."
- It's a one of a kind album.
It's the only album ever made with no samples that Dilla did.
He played everything. He had guitars.
No samples.
There isn't another Dilla produced project like that.
His logic for going left at the time...
♪ ♪
I don't know.
J DILLA: I'm just trying to always bring
something new, and I think that's been a--
kind of a problem with me.
Because I'm always trying to do something
like I've never done before.
That's where my head is at every day.
It's like, I try to do what I didn't do yesterday.
♪ ♪
- They hated 'em. [laughs]
Like, I recall at the time that
just nobody knew what to do with it.
[pensive music]
It wasn't a very commercial record.
♪ ♪
- At the time, it was the worst possible shit
that we could go through.
It caused rifts.
- The MCA thing broke that core.
FRANK: After that, I didn't see him as often.
J DILLA: The labels...
they were more commercial, you know what I'm saying,
commercial things.
But when it's a situation like that where it's just politic
or there's too many people involved or whatever,
it always waters down the music.
Um, it waters down, you know, how I feel about,
you know, my energy working on a project.
It's like a lot of factors that take away from--
from, you know, the true authentic shit.
It definitely takes away from the soul of it.
- MCA was having their own challenges at the time.
There was no real sponsor anymore left at the label
to support it.
It was kind of the end of the road.
J DILLA: I just got out of the MCA deal,
just literally a month ago.
Just signed a release.
Been asking for a release for over a year.
- After that point, Dilla got the most artistic freedom
he probably had in his whole career.
You know, he was free. He was an independent artist.
He could do what he want. J DILLA: I make CDs.
INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm. J DILLA: Um, I put like two--
I call them two batches per CD, 24 beats per CD.
And it's like last year, I did five bars.
BLACK MILK: That's his greatest work, man,
like his greatest shit is on, to me, is on the beat tapes.
[percussive music]
JEFF: I still have some of the CDs that he wrote
his name on and he just handed it to me.
He just did.
And you just so happened to be there.
And he's just like, here.
You know, here's some beats I did.
The reason why we are still finding stuff
is he was giving it away.
He was putting it out there by any means necessary.
- I have to stop doing that because I did that last year.
INTERVIEWER: We talked about that shit.
- Yeah, and that's how the bootlegs--
INTERVIEWER: That's why I'm not giving you a tape right now.
- Right, that shit is crazy.
JEFF: Even till today,
you can discover music and beat tapes that he did
that no one still has ever used.
You know, if this is someone who
arguably could make five to ten beats a day,
if you just add that up in a year,
have we heard one year of Dilla beats?
What if we only heard a year?
What about the other 12, 15 years?
- J Dilla's setting it off. Uh!
FRANK: So around 2002, maybe early 2003,
he had went on a trip.
Uh, him and Dank went to Europe for a DJ, uh, tour.
- [speaking language]
- J Dilla!
INTERVIEWER: I love you guys.
[smooches]
[mellow music]
♪ ♪
MATS: We got J Dilla in the house...
J DILLA: Yeah. Yes. MATS: At last. It's an honor.
J DILLA: Yes, man.
Yo, yo, I'm so excited right now.
I'm having a ball out here, period.
From the basement of Detroit
to be out here and to have people accept this music.
And these crazy ideas that I have,
it's--it's unbelievable to me.
You know, it's like it's unreal.
It's really unreal.
♪ ♪
MATS: This is a classic. Thanks a lot.
J DILLA: Thank you, thank you. Oh, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, man. Beautiful.
[switch clicks]
♪ ♪
- When he got back, he wasn't feeling well.
He thought he had gotten sick from food
he had eaten in Europe on the tour.
MAUREEN: He spit up a couple of times.
And he said, "I think I better go to the hospital.
I'm really not feeling well." He must have been really weak.
Took him in right away to examine him,
but then after they did his platelet count,
the lab work came back.
And then that's when they said,
we're gonna have to call the doctor.
Come to the back. Come to the back now.
They had a specialist on the way already.
They had already called. We didn't even know it.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
He ended up in that hospital staying a couple of months.
Uh, his kidneys were failing during that time.
We were told not to tell people.
But Frank and Dank, they knew, and they were there.
They were there every day just like I was.
Me and Mr. Yancy, Frank and Dank.
- At the time, I thought it was...
just him not taking care of himself, not eating properly.
I know how he gets when he making music, when he working.
You know, he could bust his head open.
As long as he can still see the buttons,
he gonna keep working.
♪ ♪
MAUREEN: TTP was what they officially said it was.
of blood disorder. That's a type
KELLEY: It's something that kind of looks like leukemia.
And it was killing him.
Like, his blood was literally killing him.
And he spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals.
And his body was really just betraying him.
MARTHA: Back and forth, losing weight,
gaining weight, in and out of the hospital,
never knowing exactly how long.
MAUREEN: He would be there two months and we'd go home.
Maybe a week later, we'd be on our way to the hospital.
Things just kept not getting better.
Dialysis almost every day.
He was in so much pain.
He begged me to take him off of the machine.
"Please take me--
"get them to take-- tell them to take it off.
I can't--" he couldn't take the pain.
It was so horrible.
He was so--his body was getting so frail.
♪ ♪
And I would be trying to be strong
and say it's almost over.
Just wait almost-- almost another hour.
He'd say, "Mama, please. Please take me off."
♪ ♪
MARTHA: I think a part of his personality
that never wanted anybody to know how much it hurt.
And he never really did express that.
♪ ♪
MAUREEN: Common called me one night
after he had got out of the hospital.
And he said "Ma, you think if maybe
"he had a change of scenery,
he might feel a little better?"
[mellow music]
♪ ♪
JOHN: When he moved to Cali, that was--
it was very at peace with him, you know,
when he lived with Common in, um, in California.
remember this, when we was in COMMON: Tell me if you the, um...
JOHN: He was taking, you know--he was taking,
you know, protein and stuff
just to kind of put the weight back.
'Cause he had been in the hospital for so long.
But like, he was good, like, you know what I mean?
He was back.
That was probably the most peaceful
he'd ever been in his life.
♪ ♪
FRANK: Donuts was a return to the old school,
kind of format of chopping and sampling,
kind of grimy, kind of dirty.
- It's meant to be a '70s, '80s kind
of old school mixtape.
'Cause back in the day, when him and Frank
and all of them were younger,
my brother was making mixtapes,
like soul mix tapes on cassette and stuff.
So that's all Donuts is. It's just like a soul mixtape.
COMMON: He did Donuts while we were at the house.
And a lot of it, you know, some of it obviously
he did while he was in the hospital.
JOHN: When I went to see him at the hospital,
and I remember a certain--
like, some of his toys like, being in the room,
you know what I mean, some of his machine.
MAUREEN: His disease seemed to give him arthritic symptoms,
hands, and pain.
Those were his tools that he worked with all those years.
So yes, they were suffering
'cause they were not doing what they were used to doing.
But he was not gonna stop.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- He would never share how ill he was.
'Cause he didn't want to stress anybody.
But James and I knew that his time was numbered, you know,
was limited.
He had been suffering with the illness for two years
before he got to California.
The doctors did a tremendous job
in bringing in doctors from, you know, Boston,
and across the states to consult
and to find out how to either conquer this illness
or stabilize it, and, uh, they were challenged.
♪ ♪
Actually, it was Lupus.
They never looked for that.
♪ ♪
FRANK: Had no clue he was in a wheelchair.
Had no clue he had lost as much weight as he had lost.
Had no idea it was as serious as it was
until he rolled off the plane
in London to start that tour.
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
And we was filming. We had the camera.
So the conversation was, hey, I got this camera, man.
You want me to film?
If you don't want me to film, you know what I'm saying.
And he said, "No, Frank, go ahead.
Do your thing, bro. It's all good."
Okay.
And still not understanding the gravity of it.
- Yo.
It's a blessing to be out here right now.
Really, this celebration--
- It's what it is, y'all. - From the D, I'm like, fuck it.
I want to see my peoples.
So make some noise if you feelin' me out there.
[all cheering]
- He even brought his moms to see y'all.
Make some motherfucking noise!
[cheers and applause]
MAUREEN: I was able to be there all the time,
which made it better for him.
During that time, he was in and out of consciousness.
And I'm sitting there,
and he's... talking to his maker.
Hear the same prayer over.
But I know he's not conscious.
And that scared me.
He is specifically saying...
"I just-- I just want to finish my work.
Just let me finish my work."
[J Dilla's "U-Love"]
JERRY: ♪ Just because... ♪ J DILLA: ♪ Yeah ♪
[vocals echoing and reverberating]
MAUREEN: They did the record release party
around the corner on La Brea and Beverly.
And he says "No, Mom, I'm a little tired today.
"I'm just not gonna go.
Just you go. You go for both of us."
FRANK: Donuts was J Dilla.
There wasn't any Ummah.
There wasn't any Soulquarians.
There wasn't any--any of that.
It was him.
JERRY: ♪ I love you ♪
FRANK: The album came out on the seventh,
which was his birthday.
JERRY: ♪ Really love you ♪
- And he passed away on the 10th.
[soft music]
MAUREEN: He had a doctor's appointment that morning.
Got James up.
I bathed him and dressed him.
I said, James, you got about 20 minutes before time for us
to leave to go to the doctor's appointment.
I said, um, you want to lay down
for a 20-minute nap, or, you know, want to leave?
He said, "I'll lay down. I'll take that nap."
And I said, okay.
♪ ♪
About 15 minutes later, I said, okay, James.
It's time to go.
And I said it twice.
And he was like-- seemed like he was so ti--
seemed like he was tired or something.
I said, James.
And he was like--barely moved.
♪ ♪
So we get in the car, and...
♪ ♪
I'm wondering why he's, like, leaning.
And I put my arms around him.
And, uh, I'm talking to him.
And he gave me this breath,
and falls on my arm-- falls in my arm.
And that was it.
♪ ♪
And I was like...
I don't know what I was like.
I don't remember breathing.
Couldn't believe it.
It was-- I didn't want to believe it.
But I felt blessed still 'cause I was there with him.
I brought him into the world, and then now he was--
and he was in my arms when he left.
[voice breaking] And, um...
FRANK: Took the phone.
Hello?
And it was Maureen, his mother.
And she just said, "Frankie, you know, he passed away.
He's gone."
And...
It was sad, man. It was, you know, unexpected.
And definitely not what I had thought or envisioned
or planned on or any of that.
- Whew, sorry.
♪ ♪
Wow.
JONATHAN: We could have done something
really special for Dilla
and in his memory with all of the material that was there,
something that really represented his legacy.
DAUGHTER: This my daddy.
- If it hadn't become about all this, like, nasty infighting.
- Initially, when I saw the will,
it struck me as, um, being very simple,
very spare, bare bones.
The documents that were filed with the court,
you can see at the top, the Google search terms
that were used to find this template.
There was simply the naming of the three executors
and the naming of the four heirs.
His mother Maureen, his brother John,
and his two daughters Ja'Mya and Ty'Monae.
Arty Erk is the primary executor of the estate.
♪ ♪
So he was chosen to be the person
to oversee the distribution of assets,
the handling of paying debts,
and figuring out how to run Dilla's business.
KELLEY: The beauty and the problem of J Dilla
is that he loved making music.
He was very good at making music.
But he probably wasn't the best businessman.
- It's common enough for there to be outstanding debts
when an artist dies, so much so that
the law actually says you have to pay off those debts
before the heirs can get anything
that they've been left in the will.
At the time of Dilla's death,
Arty Erk valued the entire estate at $400,000.
There were some outstanding debts.
There was a $500,000 tax bill owed to the IRS.
And there was an outstanding loan for almost $320,000.
- You can imagine going back to the chaos that was ensuing
around things happening on the side through various managers
and directly with Maureen and directly with Dilla
that taxes weren't always paid on all of those transactions.
[pensive music]
LAUREN: So before the heirs can get paid,
the estate needs to pay off its tax bill.
And so in order to do that,
it needs to take an inventory of everything that it has.
And that means wrangling all the songs that are out there
so that they can be monetized.
- There were all kinds of illicit uses
of Dilla's material everywhere.
KELLY: I mean, there are musicians
who are probably making music
that don't know they're making music to a Dilla beat.
You know, what do you do with that?
What's the legality when it comes to that even,
especially when some musicians will say,
"Well, he gave this to me.
"This was a gift that he gave to me,
just told me to do something with it."
- So in court documents, Arty says
there's a staggering number of copyright infringements,
there's tons of legal expense associated with it,
and it dilutes the brand.
Arty also says in a court document
including copyright infringement by a beneficiary,
Maureen Yancey.
- They dare to tell me that I don't have the right
to do certain things.
But they can do it, do what they want.
But I shouldn't be doing it
unless I get permission from them.
And that's not-- that's, you know,
I didn't get permission to have 'em.
So it can come this way.
JONATHAN: Maureen would, you know, here and there,
sell things on the side, you know, to make an album,
you know, sell beats to an artist.
Arty and Micheline were furious.
MAUREEN: I'm a Detroiter, a proud Detroiter.
So yes, I will stay in there and I will fight.
I'm not gonna let anybody put my son down,
what I do for him down, or anybody else.
Because I'm here to lift up his music, his legacy.
JOHN: My mom's intention
was always to work with the estate.
But it was more like, if y'all gonna be doing all this stuff,
but you not taking care of his family,
then it's like, what's--what's the point?
♪ ♪
- We took out this full page ad in Billboard
that basically said, there's a lot of unauthorized material
running around.
If you are not talking to Arty Erk or Micheline Levine,
you are not talking to Dilla's legacy
and you are stealing money from his children.
- Around 2008, the family gets frustrated
with the way Arty and Micheline are handling the estate.
They feel that the executors are spending too much time
on suing people when there are other ways
that the estate could be generating income.
The family files a petition with the court
asking to have Arty and Micheline removed.
In 2009, Arty and Micheline ultimately step down.
JONATHAN: I think it's unfair to accuse Micheline
or Arty or me or anyone else of being insensitive
because they were really just trying to do
what they were asked to do.
♪ ♪
Had Dilla wanted Maureen to be the keeper of the legacy,
he had the opportunity to do so.
I guess that, at the end of the day,
is really the source of the conflict.
And that must be terrible to live with.
♪ ♪
LAUREN: The thing that's challenging about a will,
in terms of how it relates to an artist's legacy,
is that the legal language in it is rigid and it's simple.
It's kind of not the right tool to use
to address how to handle an artist's legacy going forward.
It's not sophisticated or nuanced enough.
- The decedent.
I mean, for whatever tiny little legacy I have,
I want to decide.
- It is not the court's
or attorney's decisions
to decide what his heirs do with what he left.
LAUREN: According to 2021 court documents,
Dilla's estate was valued at $1.2 million.
And given he was such a prolific artist
in his lifetime with such a vast body of work,
one could wonder, you know,
how much more this estate could have been worth
had all of his affairs been in order
and it had been managed differently.
♪ ♪
JEFF: There's a commerce part of it
that this is the great J Dilla
and all of his work needs to be put out.
And we should receive some kind of compensation for it.
But that's not how J Dilla went about his art.
[J Dilla's "Don't Cry"]
HOUSE SHOES: He was one of the great creatives of all time.
He was sent here to do the work.
And he did the work.
And I ain't heard anybody better than Jay Dee.
SINGER: Unbelievable, baby girl.
SINGER: ♪ I can't stand ♪
♪ To see you cry ♪
THE ESCORTS: ♪ I can't stand to see ♪
- His work that seems so big now,
it was always that quality of work.
THE ESCORTS: ♪ To see you cry ♪
- Donuts was a legacy for him.
[J Dilla's "Last Donut of the Night"]
SINGER: L-L-Ladies and gentlemen.
L-L-L-Ladies and gentlemen.
[voice reversing, echoing]
EDWIN: I mean, Donuts is kind of the ultimate example
of that tantalizing potential, unfulfilled quality.
[J Dilla's "Gobstopper"]
- The Donuts album, I look at that as like, uh,
the exclamation point, him once again doing something
that was going to change the course of the way
a lot of artists looked at music.
[J Dilla's "Stop!"]
DIONNE: ♪ Mm, you're gonna want me back ♪
J DILLA: ♪ It's dat--it's dat real ♪
FRANK: Donuts holds that-- that folklore.
That was what dropped when he left us.
You know, I don't listen to Donuts.
It's eerie for me, the song titles,
and the way he set it up, it's like a letter.
[J Dilla's "Waves"]
- Sometimes I can just listen through it and no tears.
Sometimes I listen through it, some tears come out.
♪ ♪
He's literally saying, preparing us,
like, if you listen to the album, it's like, peace,
you know what I mean, with love.
[upbeat hip-hop music]
FRANK: His records touch people.
- Hip-hop and life, that's what J Dilla means to me.
- I bleed Dilla.
FRANK: It's far reaching, from him getting streets
named after him in France
to, you know, murals all over the world,
and probably a bigger artist than he's ever been.
CROWD: ♪ Can't keep running away ♪
- That's right, pow down.
One more time!
CROWD: ♪ Can't keep running away ♪
- His love for so many styles of music and his ability to
make them all his own,
put 'em in his MPC, which is his musical playground,
and influence the world from there.
MARTHA: I just hope that, um,
people know that when they do listen to his music,
that he put everything in it.
Everything.
- Yeah, his life had controversy.
Yeah, he had things in his life that got sticky.
But I don't know that he would want it any other way
than let the music stand tall.
And I think, man, what are we talking about right now?
SPEAKER: On behalf of the Smithsonian's National Museum
of African-American History and Culture
and from the bottom of my heart,
we want to thank you for sharing your son's legacy
with us and for trusting us to share it with the world.
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
J DILLA: I know I won't be around
to do it forever, but, um,
you know, while I am here, you know,
I just want to make my mark.