ABOUT THE BOOK
Equal parts biography, musicology, and cultural history, Dilla Time chronicles the life and legacy of J Dilla, a musical genius who transformed the sound of popular music for the twenty-first century by pioneering a new musical time-feel, an accomplishment on par with the achievements of Louis Armstrong and James Brown. Dilla, with only his drum machine, transformed the way traditional musicians play.
AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK, HARDCOVER, AUDIO & EBOOK.
ABOUT J DILLA
JAMES DEWITT YANCEY (1974-2006), known professionally as Jay Dee or J Dilla, was one of the most influential music producers of our era. Though he worked primarily in hip-hop — collaborating with artists such as The Roots, Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest, Common, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu and more — Dilla’s sonic and rhythmic impact is now felt throughout the music world from pop to jazz. Since his death from a rare blood disease at the age of 32, Dilla has been celebrated with annual “Dilla Day” festivals across the globe and lauded by journalists from NPR to The New York Times. His music has been interpreted by classical composers and studied at major universities; his drum machine is on exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.
PRAISE
AWARDS
BEST LISTS
“An ambitious, dynamic biography… that fully captures the subject’s ingenuity, originality, and musical genius.” (starred review, Best of 2022)
“A little-known but influential rap genius gets his due in this spirited biography. The book’s heart is its rich, evocative musicological analysis, complete with rhythm diagrams, of Dilla’s beats… one of the few hip-hop sagas to take the music as seriously as its maker.” (starred review)
“Detailed, well-researched, and passionate analysis of the music and life of the influential hip-hop composer, producer, and musician… Charnas has
written not simply a biography but, rather, an unconventional, journalistic documentation of musical sounds and their progressions in history and culture.”
“Whenever I’ve been asked why Dilla was special, I didn’t feel like I had the right vocabulary to explain his importance—specifically the way he made work that was so perfectly imperfect that it redefined the way I thought about art. Dan Charnas to the rescue. He scaled the mountain of Dilla’s complex career and sent back instructions so that others could make the climb. This book is a must for everyone interested in illuminating the idea of unexplainable genius.”
Questlove
“J Dilla turned what one generation deemed musical error into what the next knew to be musical innovation. In this splendid book, Dan Charnas offers an uncanny mix of research and vision, documentation and interpretation, plenitude and momentum. Dilla Time is definitive. And exhilarating.”
Margo Jefferson
“The greatest hip-hop producer of all time is getting the love and care his legacy deserves. Dilla Time is a master class.”
dream hampton
“With deep love and beautiful detail, this book gives credit where credit is most deserved — and it will inspire a new generation of music makers.”
Danyel Smith
“How can wrong be right? How can one be both universally revered and massively under-appreciated? Filled with impeccable reportage, elegant prose, and incandescent anecdotes, Dilla Time is more than an urgently needed biography of hip hop’s most revolutionary producer. It is a testament to the never-ending struggle between creativity and mortality.”
Rob Kenner
“With this assiduously researched, stirringly told, and expansively elucidated accounting of J Dilla’s life as muse, mythos, and generationally transformative composer of hip-hop beats, Dan Charnas has provided readers with an Alchemists Cookbook of its titular, wizardly subject. Charnas’ book is also an ethnographic key to the funk-da-fide Detroit family and community which nurtured and skilled Dilla in the science of soulful music production from the cradle to his tragic deathbed– preparing the artist to forge his own Cubistic, canonical and revelatory extension of the architectonic Motown legacy.”
Greg Tate
“I look at J Dilla as a man who redefined the word ‘innovative.’ This book makes you feel like you traveled his journey every single step.”
DJ Premier
“In the same way that J Dilla’s music was a portal for us to hear our world, understand our technology, and feel the pulse of life anew, Charnas has made a portal through which to understand our time—historical time, musical time, and James Yancey’s own time—in a new way. Dilla Time is a book that will be read and reread as closely and with as much pleasure as we have listened and relistened to Dilla’s music. A masterpiece.”
Jeff Chang
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAN CHARNAS spent four years researching and reporting Dilla Time. An outgrowth of a course on J Dilla he developed at NYU in 2017, the book’s roots go back to Charnas’s time in the record business, when he traveled to Detroit in 1999 to work with the producer then known as Jay Dee. Charnas wrote the definitive history of the hip-hop business, The Big Payback. He is also the author of Work Clean, a book that deconstructs chefs’ organization techniques. The cocreator and executive producer of the VH1 movie and TV series The Breaks, he lives in Manhattan and teaches at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. READ MORE.
Photo: Noah Stephens
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