By now, it's difficult to talk about James Dewitt Yancey—the accomplished producer and aspiring rapper known as Jay Dee, and more commonly J Dilla, or just Dilla, who passed away in 2006—without dipping into hagiography. His legacy means many different things to hip-hop fans; he brought Pharcyde (and much of hip-hop) into adulthood on Pharcyde's 1995 album *LabCabinCalifornia, *placing warm and sunny beats under the L.A. quartet's disillusioned musings on identity, purpose, and struggles against commerce. He supported De La Soul as they directly campaigned against rap's material excess on Stakes Is High. He collaborated with Q-Tip on A Tribe Called Quest's Beats, Rhymes & Life at the exact moment that the group's personal expansion and internal tension began to forecast their end.
These are the formative years, a pivotal part of the origin story that places him in the pantheon. But the tale behind The Diary twists the narrative. It goes back to at least 2002, years after Dilla had contributed to the then-flowering neo-soul movement by bringing a softened low end and melodic, hazy middles to Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun and D'Angelo's Voodoo. Along with his continued work with Tribe, his efforts on Q-Tip's Amplified*,* as well Common's Like Water for Chocolate* and Electric Circus, *Dilla provided a safe space for forward thinking hip-hop and smart R&B to meet on their own terms and grow beyond the sum of their parts. At a time when hip-hop and and R&B pairings were still being done as mash-ups that simply dropped a dollop of peanut butter into a chocolate cup, Dilla was experimenting with new flavors and cutting-edge swirls of tastes. It was all prescient and revolutionary and it's exactly why MCA, his then-record label shelved his solo debut Pay Jay, the album that has been dusted off and presented to us almost a decade and a half later as The Diary.
Dilla's most noted collaborators had been progressive, socially conscious writers who waxed about the big ideas about their immediate society in grand terms. But precious little of that sentiment was to be found in his own raps. As a producer, he was thoughtful and intimate; as a rapper he was brash, confrontational, and unrepentantly materialistic and misogynist. Nary a song on this project goes by without either a mention of wealth, an intimation of violence, or a dismissal of women. And sometimes he manages all three with neck-breaking economy. "The Shining, Pt. 2 (Ice)" is barely over one minute long but still manages to house uncomfortable lyrics like, "Jay been nice with his since Dre said he was a n-gga for life/ And bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks—that's what I'm thinking when I'm dickin' your wife/ Yup/ Big truck jewels in the truck with tools/ You don't want to pop shit tonight." On "The Creep (The O)" Dilla paints himself as a serial womanizer and incorrigible cuckolder. "You could stay out with Craig and them," he raps to the listener, personified as a man whose woman he's cheating with. "Mo' time for me to bang out/ Shit, I love when you hang out/ It's nothing else to do but send her home to you/ I'm through, 'til the next time we screw." The latter couplets are repurposed from the Notorious B.I.G., but the sentiment is all Dilla. As far as hip-hop trespasses go, it's quotidian by early-'00s standards, and tame by current ones. But it's obviously not what label execs expected or wanted from the guy who produced songs like Common's "Between Me, You & Liberation" and Erykah's "Kiss Me on My Neck (Hesi)."
Despite being intended as Dilla's first true solo album, *The Diary *is not what people who are seeking an entry point should gravitate to. For that, listeners are better directed towards the upcoming collection, *The Fantastic Box: A Jay Dee Production *in order to get a concise overview of his themes and sounds; or directly to his magnum opus Donuts, the last album released in his lifetime, which shows him at the height of his production mastery. In many senses, it's hard to understand who this record is directed towards. The Diary was released in conjunction with Record Store Day, an obvious move at collectors and archivists. But a quarter of these songs have already been released in some form; and Pay Jay has already widely circulated in bootleg form. The Diary comes off as a play for completists that was prefaced with a listening party at a trendy hotel and a gastronomic orgy in New York—events for the committed and connected, not the everyman. It’s an over-reaching approach that attempts to make a blockbuster out of what should be an arthouse film.
The bookends of the album—the cinematic intro, the proclamations, the heavy-handed ad-libs on the closing track—are conceits that try hard to position The Diary as an important record, but they're unnecessary. The tracks—namely Supa Dave West's "So Far," Hi-Tek's "The Creep (The O)," and Karriem Riggins' "Drive Me Wild"—are playfully bouncy enough to get heads bopping, shoulders bouncing, and hips grooving while still smart enough to be cerebrally rewarding to beat nerds. They're all incredibly short, as well. Like most numbers here, they clock in at under three minutes, all but begging for expanded editions masterminded by Dilla collaborators and devotees like, Madlib, Kanye West, and Flying Lotus. (Seriously and please.)
There are still moments, like the touchingly personal title track, where we are reminded Dilla was a beast of an MC when he wanted to be. On "The Shining, Pt. 1 (Diamonds)," Dilla lights up like a late-90's Jay Z. An obvious take on Jay's "Girl's Best Friend," it's a song-long metaphor as love song to bling and plays like Dilla's radio concession. But Dilla may as well have been prophesying his legacy: "You so special, you multifaceted/ You can cut glass with it/ It's so brilliant /Go spend a little dough, look like you sold millions/ Plus you everlastin'/ And drastically important when sportin' your ghetto fashion." That was Dilla—multifaceted and brilliant—and The Diary is notable for presenting an official release to his intended debut. And, just like any diamond unearthed after many years, The Diary is flawed, but still precious.
