J Dilla & Luther Ingram

 I wanted to start this blog by incorporating one of hip-hop's most famous producers, the late great J Dilla. (He is also the cover photo of this blog!) I'll be taking a look at his song Gobstopper off of the album Donuts, which samples Luther Ingram's To the Other Man.

To this day, James Dewitt Yancey, AKA J Dilla, is renowned as one of the best producers of all time. He was a master at splicing up songs at a time when the technology available was not easy to work with. Nowadays, we have programs that make splicing much easier and user-friendly, but when J Dilla was alive he was doing everything manually. He is also known for what is now called "Dilla Time." It is a way of manipulating the time within the music that gives it an off-beat or off-kilter feel. It isn't straight, but it isn't necessarily swung either. It meets them both somewhere in the middle, giving the beat an uneven feel. If you decide to explore some of his music, you'll hear this pretty frequently, it is very cool!

Here is Gobstopper:

I love this beat! It is so simple, yet executed so well. You can slightly hear that off-kilter time he creates by the way the drums fall on the downbeats. I feel that this stems from the snare in this case. It is landing ever so slightly behind the beat, while the kick falls closer to the downbeat. As we'll see, the brass sample he uses is just a small part of a very large song. J Dilla had an incredible ear for finding snippets hidden in some of the most unknown songs, and he knew exactly how to manipulate them to create a killer beat.

Here is To the Other Man:

The sample itself appears at 2:06, it is very clear! J Dilla sped up the original to create Gobstopper. I really enjoyed this song, the lyrics are very uplifting as well. He is basically saying to give respect to others, listening to the words his mother told him. He can use those lessons his mother taught him to help uplift others instead of bringing them down. I had never heard of Luther Ingram prior to this, but I think I'll look into more of his songs in the future. I appreciated the orchestration on this song, it has a full string section, brass and saxes, and it sounds like theres even some french horn on there as well!