J Dilla

James Dewitt Yancey (February 7, 1974 – February 10, 2006), better known by the stage names J Dilla and Jay Dee, was an American record producer, rapper, singer, and songwriter.

He emerged during the mid-1990s underground hip hop scene in Detroit, as a member of the group Slum Village.

He was also a member of the Soulquarians, a musical collective active during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Yancey died at the age of 32 from a combination of TTP and lupus.

Although his life was short, he is considered one of the most influential producers in hip hop and popular music.

J Dilla's music raised the artistic level of hip-hop production in Detroit.

According to The Guardian, "His affinity for crafting lengthy, melodic loops peppered with breakbeats and vocal samples took instrumental hip-hop into new, more musically complex realms."

In particular, his approach to drum programming, with its loose, or "drunk" style that experimented with non-standard quantization, has been influential on producers and drummers.

James Yancey grew up in Detroit.

The family lived in a house on the northeast corner of McDougall and Nevada, on the east side of Detroit.

Yancey's parents had musical backgrounds; his mother, Maureen "Ma Dukes" Yancey, is a former opera singer and his father, Beverly Dewitt Yancey, was a jazz bassist, and performed Globetrotters half-time shows for several years.

Yancey's mother said that he could "match pitch perfect harmony" before he learned how to speak.

Along with a range of other musical genres, Yancey developed a passion for hip hop music.

After transferring from Davis Aerospace Technical High School to Pershing High School, his classmates T3 and Baatin joined him in rap battles; the three later formed the rap group Slum Village.

Yancey also took up beat-making using a simple tape deck as the center of his studio.

In his teenage years, he "stayed in the basement alone" to train himself to produce beats with his growing record collection.

By the mid-1990s Yancey had a string of singles and remix projects for artists such as Janet Jackson, The Pharcyde, De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip's solo album and others.

Many of these productions were released without his name recognition, being credited to the Ummah, a production collective composed of him, Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, and later Raphael Saadiq of Tony! Toni! Toné!.

However, he was given songwriting credit on all of his non-remix productions under the Ummah.

Under this umbrella, Yancey produced original songs and remixes for Janet Jackson, Busta Rhymes, Brand New Heavies, Something For the People, trip hop artists Crustation and many others.

In 1992, Yancey met the Detroit musician Amp Fiddler, who let him use his Akai MPC, a music workstation, which he quickly mastered.

Fiddler, while playing keyboards with Funkadelic on the 1994 Lollapalooza tour, met Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, the group was also in the lineup.

Fiddler introduced Q-Tip to Yancey, who gave Q-Tip a Slum Village demo tape.

In 1995, Yancey and MC Phat Kat formed 1st Down and became the first Detroit hip hop group to sign with a major label (Payday Records).

The deal ended after one single when the label ended the contract.

In 1995, Yancey recorded the Yester Years EP with 5 Elementz (a group consisting of Proof, Thyme and Mudd).

He handled production on seven tracks from The Pharcyde's album Labcabincalifornia, released in the holiday season of 1995 and Hello, the debut album by Poe, released earlier that year on Modern Records.

In 1996, he formed Slum Village and recorded what would become their debut album Fantastic, Vol. 1 at RJ Rice Studios.

Upon its release in 1997, the album quickly became popular with fans of Detroit hip hop.

Many journalists compared Slum Village to A Tribe Called Quest.

However, Yancey said he felt uncomfortable with the comparison and often voiced it in several interviews.

"It was kinda fucked up [getting that stamp] because people automatically put us in that [Tribe] category. That was actually a category that we didn't actually wanna be in. I thought the music came off like that, but we didn't realize that shit then. I mean, you gotta listen to the lyrics of the shit. Niggas was talking about getting head from bitches. It was like a nigga from Native Tongues never woulda said that shit. I don't know how to say it. It's kinda fucked up because the audience we were trying to give to were actually people we hung around. Me, myself, I hung around regular ass Detroit cats. Not the backpack shit that people kept putting out there like that. I mean, I ain't never carried no goddamn backpack. But like I said, I understand to a certain extent. I guess that's how the beats came off on some smooth type of shit. And at that time, that's when Ruff Ryders [was out] and there was a lot of hard shit on the radio so our thing was we're gonna do exactly what's not on the radio."

2000 marked the major label debut of Slum Village with Fantastic, Vol. 2, creating a new following for Yancey as a producer and an MC.

He was also a founding member of the production collective known as The Soulquarians (along with Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, D'Angelo and James Poyser amongst others) which earned him more recognition.

He later worked with Erykah Badu, Poe, Talib Kweli, and Common—contributing heavily to the latter's critically acclaimed breakthrough album, Like Water for Chocolate.

His debut as a solo artist came in 2001 with the single "Fuck the Police" (Up Above Records), followed by the album Welcome 2 Detroit, which began British independent record label BBE's "Beat Generation" series.

In 2001, Yancey began using the name J Dilla to differentiate himself from Jermaine Dupri who also goes by "J.D."

He left Slum Village to pursue a major label solo career with MCA Records.

In 2002, Yancey produced Frank-N-Dank's 48 Hours, as well as a solo album, but neither record was ever released, although the former surfaced through bootlegging.

When Yancey finished working with Frank-N-Dank on the 48 Hours album, MCA Records requested a record with a larger commercial appeal, and the artists re-recorded the majority of the tracks, this time using little to no samples.