sexualassumptions:

From the article:

“So what set Dilla apart? Why has his brand of virtuosity proved so captivating to the jazz crowd?

For one, Dilla was a sort of human musical encyclopedia. In his studio, he sorted thousands of vinyl records, many of them jazz, into specific sections and kept them alphabetized so that he could dig up the right sample as soon as inspiration arrived. He didn’t just rely on his collection, either. He was always ready to pick up a guitar or a bass, or saddle up behind the drum kit, or hammer out chords on the keyboard.

Dilla would happily wrangle split-second clips from albums just for the timbre of a single note, or the texture of vinyl, or the clack of a snare drum hit. “Every track he did, he had different drum sounds,” says Damion Reid, a jazz drummer who grew up listening to hip-hop in the 1990s. “Most producers around that time — like DJ Premier and Diamond D and guys like that — they kind of had a sound. When you heard a beat, you knew it was them because of the drums. [In Dilla’s music], I would hear that every sample, every drum, every nuance, every atmospheric sound was strategically placed. Jay Dee embodied, to me, the culmination of all those things.’”