You could easily teach a class about hip hop from a copy of Donuts. It’s all there: wide ranging samples, smooth transitions from song to song, simple loops so effective they really aren’t simple at all. Certainly an album that harks back to the days when it didn’t matter that a record was only forty-plus minutes¹ long because you listened to it over and over until, at times, even the transition from the last track to the first one ran together seamlessly as, yes, donuts. Jay Dee produced an album with that rarest of musical versatility: on one end the ability to hang in the background, allowing you to work or write or read, though slowly seep into your system and influence one’s general mood; on the other end the depth to be listened to closely.

Lightworks got me first. That beat is just so crazy its ridiculous, biggest pocket ever², which I guess is essential Dilla, plus the added genius of sampling old advertisement scores only sweetens the deal. Also, not to be passed over is the second time the female vocal sample comes back around. The first time – “Light up the skies, the name of the game is lightworks” – the second time what could only be “Light up the
spliffs, the name of the game is lightworks.” Needless to say spliffs is never sung on the sample, its only pulled off due to some clever cutting by Jay Dee. Anti-American Graffiti got me second. It starts at the peak of its loop and then unfolds quite nicely. Again, the type of beat you can bump or get lost in³.

It’s the little things. The change of speeds in Don’t Cry, or Two Can
Win which makes heavy use of a vocal sample that pleads “Only one can win.” The harsh edge of tracks like The Factory and The Twister. The slightly out of tune piano on U-Luv. Let’s be honest: these are the type of reasons why we love hip hop in general. The siren in between many tracks and the song transitions themselves. Of course, there are also the not-so-subtle elements of the project. The Frank Zappa sample (go ahead, get your girlfriend), the use of Light My Fire, (everyone is familiar)
or the blaring horns on Gobstopper.

Still in heavy rotation (I have no qualms here speaking for the entire hip hop community) in everybody’s record, CD, and iTunes collections after three years, Donuts is just classic. Like Illmatic classic. And not because of its creator’s unfortunate passing, though many will credit the project’s success to the attention it garnered from Jay Dee’s death. If the event affected the album, it was more in its creation more than its distribution: No artist can simulate the effects of working under such time restraints.⁴

 

In the car. Donuts on.
Passenger: This album is awfully mastered.
Driver: Really? It’s considered by many to be
the greatest instrumental hip hop album of all
time?⁵

 
Artists, producers – if you want to be humbled, and it is a good idea for us all to be humbled semi-regularly – try to pick apart Donuts, try to imagine creating
some of these tracks. Try to imagine stringing them together perfectly. Like
much of DJ Premier’s work, the beats aren’t overly complicated or heavy with instrumentation, but there is great art in making the simple seem extraordinary.

 

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1. illmatic / the infamous on the one had – new common and
   roots records on the other hand, not that new common and roots records
   aren’t fantastic, its just that (from an idealistic listening perspective) a
   40 min record has to be damn near perfect. On the other hand,
   from a marketing perspective…
2. Hip hop beats need a huge pocket, not only for the
   lyrics, but for the main sample within the loop. Of course it differs
   with taste.
3. Perhaps in the change of ownership from song to
   sample, the fact that “my family tree is my history” is not hip
   hop’s/dilla’s history, but becomes it the moment that it was sampled.
4. Also space restraints: much of the album was
   created/mixed in Jay Dee’s hospital room
5. Driver=Phila. Slick Bassist Mike Polinsky / Passenger
   to remain nameless