J. Dilla aka Jay Dee, has come a long way since his early days as 1/3 of The Ummah, alongside Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Mohammed. Initially, people hated the new sound of A Tribe Called Quest found on “Beats, Rhymes, and Life” and “The Love Movement”, because it was a change from the classic sound found on the group’s first three releases. But eventually, people warmed up to Jay Dee, acting as the backbone of Slum Village, producing both volumes of “Fantastic”, and later going on to work with Common, Madlib, Busta Rhymes, and many others. Taking a little time off, due to being hospitalized with an undisclosed ailment, Dilla has been quiet lately, but while cooped up in the hospital bed, he’s crafted perhaps his most daring solo project yet, Donuts. 

      Crafted more like a mixtape than an album, Dilla’s Donuts is billed as an “instrumental” album. It’s almost that, but more accurately could be described as a series of samples – many times with vocals included – manipulated like only Dilla could. It could be described as Dilla’s take on Madlib’s Quasimoto concept, except without the helium induced vocals. 

     The album begins with the beautifully crafted “Workinonit”, which essentially is the album’s only true fully crafted instrumental, clocking in at just under 3 minutes. Much of the rest of the tracks on the record range from 1 to 1.5 minutes long, ranging from dreamy loops (“Waves”) to rare samples that just add little bits of flavor to this soulful mix (“Light My Fire”). Other times we get to hear Dilla’s creative process in action, such as on “Time: The Donut of The Heart”, where he lets the original sample ride, before skewing into something else. This leads beautifully into “Glazed”, which blares with raucous horny horns that build off of the previous track, in tune and on time. Each “Lightworks”, “U Love”, or “Don’t Cry” are other good examples, where Dilla plays like a Beni-Hana chef, chopping up the meat of the sample right before your ears. 

     What separates this from other instrumental albums is that it plays through non-stop from start to finish, rather than just being a series of different tracks that have little or nothing to do with one another. It’s obvious the intention of this album was to be listened to a whole, rather than to farm out these beats later for other artists to rap over. Each track builds off the one before it, lending an incredibly cohesive “mixtape” (in the true sense of the word) feel to the project as a whole. It becomes almost hypnotic, and amazingly, the album starts and begins with the same loop, so if listening to the CD with the “repeat” button turned on, one wouldn’t be able to tell where it starts or ends.  Satisfaction guaranteed.