Pretty cool Dilla tribute

Today marks the third anniversary of the death of the great J Dilla. No matter where you rank Dr. Dre, The Neptunes, Producer Kanye, NO I.D., the RZA, Prince Paul, Timbaland, Swizz Beatz, DJ Premier or even Rick Rubin, you have to concede Dilla is in the top-5 list of all-time hip hop producers. Look for the good folks over at BlindI to put together a bunch of tribute posts, like they did last year.

Super Yancey Bros. 1

J Dilla's kid brother- Illa J- is starting to emerge in the rap scene and is MCing over some of his brother's tracks. It's pretty ill and I can't wait to see what else he releases. Get it here.

Did someone just say Dilla?

Here are a few J Dilla-produced tracks that just came out. I know you like Dilla, that's a prerequiste, and I assume you like Ghostface and MF Doom. Consider this your lucky day.

MF Doom- Sniper Elite

Ghostface Killer- Murder Goons

Happy Birthday Dilla!!

So today marks what would have been J Dilla's 34th Birthday. He went through a lot during his time on this Earth, but he still managed to absolutly reinvent Hip-Hop from a production standpoint. No man has done it better.

For all those music illiterits, Dilla has been called "your favorite producer's favorite producer." He has been cited as an inspirtaion to Kanye West, ?uestlove, Pharrell Williams, Just Blaze, A Tribe Calleb Quest, and a lot of others I can't think of right now.

Seeing that it's the man's birthday has reminded me of how bad mainstream Hip-Hop really is. I don't feel like I need to go into the whole "Hip-Hop is dead" thing because about 95% of blogs out there will tell you that. Its not that Hip-Hop is dead, its that mainstream Hip-Hop is dead and was never really alive. When you look back on the best rap groups of the 90's, it wasn't like A Tribe Called Quest was dominating MTV and mainstream radio waves weren't exactly pumping out a lot of Wu-Tang.

Bringing this back to Dilla, Pharrell and Chad Hugo were on 106& Park a couple of months ago and were asked what producer they would like to work with, other than each other. Pharrell said Dilla and Free was like "Is that an up-and-coming producer we need to look out for?" P looked pissed and rightfully so. But that is just the way mainstream music has become. Anyways, if you want a real good tribute to Jay Dee, head over to Blind I, where their members have pretty much dedicated the entire day to the man.