Change Request | JayDee DeeeLite
Written as an homage to one of my favorite creatives, JayDee DeeeLite is tribute the iconic Detroit musical enigma, Mister James Dewitt Yancey aka J Dilla aka Jay Dee.
A founding member of Slum Village, J Dilla racked up nearing a thousands of credits in his career crafting beats, originals, remixes, and songs, beginning his prolific journey just out of high school.
Writing and recording under the moniker The Ummah—including Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammed, D’Angelo and Raphael Saadiq—Jay Dee wrote originals and remixes for Janet Jackson, Busta Rhymes, Brand New Heavies, Something For The People, alongside many more. His uncanny ability to produce unique arrangements and effective musical grooves, quickly, was a major contributing factor to his desirability as a first call producer for many artists.
Along with his contributions to The Ummah, he was also an active member of The Soulquarians—a nationally dispersed collective of hip-hop musicians—Yancey’s influence on the musical progression of hip hop culture—significantly beat oriented music production—is immeasurable.
In 1992, Detroit artist Amp Fiddler introduced J Dilla to the machine that would become the centerpiece of his artistry, the AKAI MPC. His MPC3000 now residing in the Smithsonian, this sampled based music production center was the last MPC design lead by Roger Linn at AKAI before he parted ways with the Japanese company in the mid-90s.
Known for it’s unique “Swing” quantization function, This feature of the MPC60 and MPC3000 a end result of many years of Roger’s pioneering efforts to incorporate a more human way to work with machines designed for programming aspects of music. Crafting a unique approach to sampling and rhythmic programming, Jay Dee manifested a prolific catalogue of work that emphasized and borrow many of the genre, harmonic, and spiritual elements of Black American Music, while contrasting his off-kilter, programmed rhythm sections of punchy 12-bit grit, presented in a contemporary manner.
For this homage, I created an original work that celebrates some of the zeitgeist of Dilla’s music—sampled drum sounds, recorded off of records, edited and played back from a 12-bit digital audio sampler, the lilt drum programming combined with an arpeggiated Moog bass. A Roland Juno-60 and Oberheim OB-X are both used for pads and brass tones—then resampled —played them forwards and backwards to create evolving lush layers that providing contrast to the gritty slug drums, and then added a live string section.
A legacy that has yet to be fully realized, as more unreleased tracks sporadically see the light, we will still be calculating the massive influence of this musician for many years to come.
Enjoy!
