Random Midday Hotness: Climax.

Day 4 – and probably the final day – of J Dilla Appreciation Week.

Word to Slum Village, Dilla’s former group and a criminally slept-on hip-hop collective based out of Detroit:

It’s hard to put into words my appreciation for the music of Slum Village, particularly Dilla. I don’t want this post or this series to come off like a mash note. But I can’t help how I feel about them and their contribution to hip hop.

Respect must be paid.

Dilla had a hand in the kind of music that will always keep me connected to the genre, even if I have to endure countless hours of Soulja Boy or Gucci Mane or Maino (but let’s not push it). And even if I become as old and out-of-touch with popular music as I thought my parents did when I was a kid.

Who knows? Maybe it’s already happened.

But “Thelonius” sounds as fresh to me today as it did in 2000, when I was wanna-be backpacker in Fort Worth, which is at least four hours away from any hip-hop hub worth mentioning.

Today, I can’t tell you anything about Young Money. I’ll probably never care for the Black-Eyed Peas (again). And I still can’t understand the fuss over Snoop (anymore).

But we can always find common ground if you’re good with “The Love Movement.”

So, hope you all enjoyed this series as much as I did. If anything, it reminded me that I need to dig a little deeper into my crates.

Also, I can’t forget to mention “Little Brother” with Black Star. I was just put on to this earlier this week. The whole thing is so nice it almost made me leave work early today.

Joel

Joel Anderson —blackink —  writes about sports, politics, crime, courts, and other issues far beyond his competence at BuzzFeed. He has worked at media outlets in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Atlanta and contributed to a number of publications, including The Root and The American Prospect, among many others.
  • I was just thinking about this today listening to that Brazilian Dilla tribute over and over again. I came up on old school NYC battle rapping and through its evolution I grew into the worst kind of NYC Hip-Hop bigot, there was no other hip-hop but NY hip-hop to me for so long. To this day I own very few gangsta rap era West Coast jams. I remember the disbelief I felt when I learned they were from Detroit, total cognitive dissonance, I was like “nah…word?” Dilla and Slum Village were really important to me in that their greatness got me to stop that NYC only nonesense and listen to good music regardless of geography.

  • Oh man, I love Slum Village. Fantastic Vol. 2 is still in steady rotation after all these years. The whole album is, well, fantastic (sorry I had to) but my favorites are “Players” and “Tell Me.” Oh, and “Forth and Back.”

    I cannot believe it’s been four years since J Dilla passed on. Goodness.

  • Oh yeah. “Conant Gardens.” “Tell Me.” And of course my favorite, “Thelonius.”

    Fantastic Vol. 2 carried me through the summer before my final semester of college. For real.

    Little Brother is probably the group that reminds me the most of Slum, stylistically and musically. You just get the feelings that it’s a bunch of friends sitting around the studio, messing around on the mic and behind the boards.

    But it sounds so lovely.