Synopses & Reviews
From a Los Angeles hospital bed, equipped with little more than a laptop and a stack of records, James “J Dilla” Yancey crafted a set of tracks that would forever change the way beatmakers viewed their artform. The songs on Donuts are not hip hop music as “hip hop music” is typically defined; they careen and crash into each other, in one moment noisy and abrasive, gorgeous and heartbreaking the next. The samples and melodies tell the story of a man coming to terms with his declining health, a final love letter to the family and friends he was leaving behind. As a prolific producer with a voracious appetite for the history and mechanics of the music he loved, J Dilla knew the records that went into constructing Donuts inside and out. He could have taken them all and made a much different, more accessible album. If the widely accepted view is that his final work is a record about dying, the question becomes why did he make this record about dying?
Drawing from philosophy, critical theory and musicology, as well as Dillas own musical catalogue, Jordan Ferguson shows that the contradictory, irascible and confrontational music found on Donuts is as much a result of an artists declining health as it is an example of what scholars call “late style,” placing the album in a musical tradition that stretches back centuries.
Review
"The book is at once a worthy biography of Dillas early life, a lush blueprint of Donuts‘s sample sources and a moving personal essay on what the record might actually be about…Ferguson has aced his listening homework (and done the extra credit)." - Scott Heins, OKPlayer.com "Early on in the book, just as he begins to make his case, Ferguson offers up a rather exemplary articulation of why Donuts deserves a book, why its myth is manicured so delicately, and why we love it so."-Nicholas Miriello, Los Angeles Review of Books
About the Author
Jordan Ferguson is a freelance culture writer based in Toronto. He can be found online at poetryforgravediggers.com.
Table of Contents
1. Hi [Introduction]
2. Geek Down [Analysis of the album as a "Death Record"]
3. Anti-American Graffiti [Late Style]
4. Don't Cry [Existentialism]
5. The Diff'rence [Career overview to 2003]
6. The Twister (Huh, What) [Stylistic shifts and physical relocations]
7. Workinonit [The creation of Donuts]
8. Bye [The Legacy of the Donuts]