Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm

Product Information

Yet since his death, J Dilla has become a demigod, revered as one of the most important musical figures of the past hundred years. 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. Culled from more than 150 interviews about one of the most important and influential musical figures of the past hundred years, Dilla Time is a book as delightfully detail-oriented and unique as J Dilla's music itself.

In Dilla Time, Dan Charnas chronicles the life of James DeWitt Yancey, from his gifted childhood in Detroit, to his rise as a Grammy-nominated hip-hop producer, to the rare blood disease that caused his premature death; and follows the people who kept him and his ideas alive. 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. 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.Dilla Time is a different kind of book about music, a visual experience with graphics that build those concepts step by step for fans and novices alike, teaching us to see and feel rhythm in a unique and enjoyable way. He also rewinds the histories of American rhythms: from the birth of soul in Dilla's own Motown, to funk, techno, and disco. Based on nearly two hundred original interviews, and filled with graphics that teach us to feel and “see” the rhythm of Dilla’s beats, Dilla Time is a book as defining and unique as J Dilla’s music itself.

Based on nearly two hundred original interviews, and filled with graphics that teach us to feel and "see" the rhythm of Dilla's beats, Dilla Time is a book as defining and unique as J Dilla's music itself. He scaled the mountain of Dilla’s complex career and sent back instructions so that others could make the climb. 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. In Dilla Time, Dan Charnas chronicles the life of James DeWitt Yancey, from his gifted Detroit childhood to his rise as a sought-after hip-hop producer to the rare blood disease that caused his premature death.Equal parts biography, musicology and cultural history, Dilla Time chronicles the life and legacy of James Dewitt Yancey, from his Detroit childhood to his rise as a sought-after hip-hop producer to the rare blood disease that caused his premature death. He wasn’t known to mainstream audiences, and when he died at age thirty-two, he had never had a pop hit. And at the core of this adulation is innovation: a new kind of musical time-feel that he created on a drum machine, but one that changed the way traditional musicians play. Yet since his death, J Dilla has become a demigod, revered as one of the most important musical figures of the past hundred years, a genius who transformed the sound of popular music for the Twenty First Century. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

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.And he rewinds the histories of American rhythms: from the birth of Motown soul to funk, techno, and disco. Dilla's beats, startling some people with their seeming 'sloppiness,' were actually the work of a perfectionist al- most spiritually devoted to his music.