J Dilla: Unquantized MPC Drums, Shelved MCA Albums and Donuts

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James Dewitt Yancey was born in Detroit in 1974 to Maureen, known as Ma Dukes, a former opera singer, and a jazz bassist father who played halftime shows for the Harlem Globetrotters. His mother said he matched pitch before he could speak. At Pershing High School he formed Slum Village with T3 and Baatin and made pause tapes on a basic deck before Amp Fiddler let him use an Akai MPC in 1992. Fiddler passed a demo to Q-Tip at Lollapalooza in 1994, and after Slum Village's Fantastic, Vol. 1 in 1996 he produced for Janet Jackson, Busta Rhymes, De La Soul and the Pharcyde, often credited only under the Ummah collective with Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad.

Renamed J Dilla to avoid confusion with Jermaine Dupri, he joined the Soulquarians with Questlove, D'Angelo, Erykah Badu and Common, and turned off quantization on his MPC 3000, placing kicks early and snares late to create the off-grid bounce Questlove credits with shaping neo-soul. MCA shelved Frank-n-Dank's 48 Hours and his own solo album, so he went independent. Diagnosed with TTP and lupus, he toured Europe in a wheelchair in 2005, faced reported medical bills of half a million dollars a month, and finished Donuts on an SP-303 in a Los Angeles hospital. It came out on his 32nd birthday, three days before he died on February 10, 2006.

• His first major label group, First Down, signed to Payday Records in 1995 and released one single.
• His shelved MCA solo album featured production from Kanye West and Madlib.
• After moving to Los Angeles in 2004 he formed Jaylib with Madlib and released Champion Sound.
• His mother lost the family home amid a long fight with the estate's executor over bootlegs and control.
• His Minimoog Voyager and MPC 3000 entered the Smithsonian's African American history museum in 2014.