Buying a Piece of J Dilla

J Dilla passed away seven years ago. Recently I purchased a piece of his legacy.

The opportunity came about back in January when Dilla’s mother, who is affectionately known throughout the hip hop world as Ma Dukes, put part of her son’s record collection on eBay. The deal went like this: For $29.99 fans and interested collectors would be sent one random vinyl album and a certificate of authenticity confirming that it was a genuine part of Dilla’s collection. The process resembles a pot-luck vinyl sale: You might get something Dilla sampled for Common, De La Soul or Slum Village, or you might end up with dollar bin fodder that he may never have listened to. The eBay listing explains that the records on offer were part of a stash Dilla had put into storage after his Detroit basement flooded and he moved to Los Angeles. (It also includes the disclaimer that a “large portion” of Dilla’s collection is still being held for use in a “possible future hip hop museum and upcoming record release projects.”)

Duly ordered, my album arrived packaged in a standard white cardboard record mailer, which detailed the sender as “Dilla Record” from a Michigan address. I hesitated before opening the package, struck by a tingle of excitement that maybe I’d lucked out and been sent an album containing a break that formed a cornerstone of those early Slum Village recordings. But that moment was fleeting. The buzz quickly dissipated and an eerie feeling took over: Buying up something that once belonged to someone that has passed away – and doing so in an openly commercial enterprise like this – can’t help but have a whiff of the distasteful about it. Especially so when Dilla's death still seems so close.

The first thing that caught my eye when I pulled the record out was the price. Yep, it was a dollar bin find, complete with a $1.00 price sticker on the top right-hand corner (marked down from $1.99!). It was stamped “Street Corner Music.” That's a hell of a mark-up for Ma Dukes, I thought with a wry smile.

The record's cover art hit me next: A black and white photo of nine besuited jazz musicians posing with their instruments outside what I’d soon learn from the liner notes on the back cover was the entrance to the Blue Parrot nightclub in Manhattan. Below the group, overlaid on the concrete pavement, were the words Downtown Uproar and a logo for Stash Records Inc.

Not recognizing the record or the group, my next thought was the obvious one: Check online to see if Dilla had ever sampled the group’s grooves. The usual Internet spots and a general Google search threw up nothing to link the record to Dilla’s discography; it also revealed that Downtown Uproar was the album’s title – the group was The Widespread Depression Orchestra. They were a revivalist swing band active during the late ’70s. The liner notes claimed they "epitomize the musical spirit of the black bands of the ’30s and ’40s, while giving us a fresh look at the music." One of the group’s biggest selling points, apparently, was their “red-blooded authenticity.”

The daunting feeling that I'd just spent $30 on a dollar store record that Dilla bought on a random whim was growing. This wasn’t Nigerian email scam territory, but with my personally numbered certificate claiming that Ma Dukes had already sold 921 of the records, my mental calculations had her haul at nearly $30,000 in eBay money. Nice work if you can hustle it.

So I did what I probably should have done right from the outset: I listened to the record. This is where the mood of the experience changed. The first song, “Topsy,” begins with two bars of open angular vibes playing courtesy of lead singer Jonny Holtzman. As someone whose main genre of listening is hip hop, the riff sounded like something that could easily and effectively be looped up as the basis for a new song. There was a jarring nature to the pattern of the vibes which brought to mind something DJ Premier would have tapped into during his mid ’90s period – somewhere between the freakish hue of Jeru’s “Come Clean” and the nostalgia of Nas’ “Memory Lane (Sittin' In Da Park).”

My mind started to speculate on the record’s story: Was Dilla digging for sample dust in Street Corner Music when he became intrigued by Downtown Uproar’s cover? Did his cursory spin of the album last only a couple of seconds as he became smitten by the potential of those opening vibes?

As the record played on, the conjecture continued. The first side also contains a song titled “Reefer Man.” With its perky bop and a refrain of “Have you seen the reefer man?” it wasn't a giant leap to imagine Dilla and his weed-hound pal Madlib speeding it up, slowing it down or warping the ditty to turn it into a skit for a future Jaylib album. Downtown Uproar also ends with a rendition of Duke Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle Do” that murmurs into life with a grainy, low-slung wail of brass. It sounds like it’s waiting to be repurposed into a backing for frequent Dilla spar Guilty Simpson’s baritone vocals. Dilla might have planned to mine Downtown Uproar into three rugged hip hop productions, but, of course, we’ll never know.

Some other buyers have posted positive feedback on eBay declaring they received records that Dilla had sampled. I can’t help but wish Ma Dukes’ endeavor had been thought out along different lines, with a selection of records that J Dilla had actually sampled being offered up for auction to the highest bidder. It seems like a more fitting tribute to his legacy, and one that would have served Dilla’s diehard fans more earnestly. Hip hop producers of Dilla’s era bought an awful lot of records – and often solely on the basis of striking cover art or a familiar executive producer credit buried in the liner notes. A lot of it is simply by-product in the search for samples. There's definitely a disappointment in receiving a record that you can’t even say was the backbone for a Frank N Dank song – something that's more by-product than sample gold.

But maybe I should take a broader view. As a hip hop producer, Dilla’s record collection was his bank of raw elements. Something about Downtown Uproar piqued his interest; it became part of the DNA of his collection. I’ll likely never find out what struck him about the record for sure, but in the process I have gained what feels like a closer glimpse into the way Dilla constructed his beats. I’ve also discovered an enjoyable record that will begin its latest life as part of my own record collection.

This renewal of sounds and records is key to hip hop’s story and, in grand terms, selling off Dilla’s record collection is a perfect example of that. Reading through the liner notes on the back of Downtown Uproar, there's a quote that sums it up in a way that Dilla would have no doubt appreciated: “[The Widespread Depression] hew to the spirit of the originals, while simultaneously using them as a framework for their own interpretation.” It somehow doesn’t seem like a coincidence that those words were penned in 1979, hip hop’s official year of birth on wax.