Joint Contrast

By – J.C.

You die one day and you go on to live forever. At least in the hearts and minds of the people you’ve impacted in some form or another during the course of your existence.

That dawned on me last night as I finished browsing the music selections at Park Ave. CDs in Winter Park. DJ Y-NOT was spinning vintage J Dilla tracks on the turntables, and I was posted up, flipping through a book about Hunter S. Thompson. Oh, the irony.

Some local staples in Orlando’s hip-hop community organized the night as a way to pay homage to the legacy of the late producer. He passed away three years ago. It was a night of good music that doubled as a way to help raise funds for his mother, better known as Ma Dukes, who now suffers from the same disease (lupus) that took her son’s life and is now estranged from the estate Dilla left behind.

Leave it up to local torch-bearers of the genre, Solillaquists of Sound, to lead the charge for such a gathering. Donuts were brought in for the hip-hop heads (which happens to be the name of Dilla’s swan song) at the mere cost of a donation. Same donation idea got you an impressive 80-minute mix of Dilla contributions, put together by Y-NOT.

On a side note, if fans are lucky, the latest Solillaquists’ release on Anti- is due out this June “If the samples get cleared in time,” says producer Divinci with a smile. In the meantime, the track “Death of a Muse” with J-Live, Chali 2na and Dilla’s mother has been another way for fans to help the family take care of the two daughter he left behind.

But back to Dilla, the producer. Chances are you’ve nodded your head time and time again to some of the sounds he’s created during the decade leading to his death. And you likely never even knew it was him pushing out those beats. Not because of such aliases as J-88 and Jay-Dee in the liner notes but because many of those projects, if not instant classics, have been better appreciated with time.

Remember spinning the likes of Slum Village, Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, The Pharcyde, The Roots, Common and De La Soul in the mid-to-late 1990s? Dilla beats are sprinkled throughout many of the albums released by them all.

But dude is gone now. Tributes, shout-outs and his music are all that lives on. And the difference between remembering the contributions of an artists such as Dilla, compared to what hoodlums such as Tupac and Biggie left behind, comes down to where you’re at in your life now and how much that life has changed since those untimely passings took place. We’re talking grown folks stuff.

Can’t help but wonder how obscure or underground Dilla would remain today, without all the R.I.P. remembrance and the love that’s been shown by his peers. That affection has trickled down to the fans as well. Give a listen to the instrumental albums released under his name and you’ll realize just what the genre is missing.

Though I’ve used Dilla as the backbone to this entry, what I really wanted to touch on was that in death, particularly one at a young age, the legacy you are remembered by is largely left in the hands of the people who are still here.

You got Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain and on and on and on and on down the list of individuals who’s short lives have turned into tall tales regurgitated into books and film. I recall an ex-girlfriend and I using the birthday of Jim Morrison as an excuse to “re-light our fire” for a night, pardon the pun, after one particular cold December high school day wound down. I’m sure the Lizard King would have been proud, so I thought.

In truth, I’m often privately taken aback by the number of people I’ve seen carried out in caskets in my relatively young life. I think about it more often than I care to admit, figuring it’s just another avenue in my memory bank I can’t help but explore every now and again. Family and friends die and we move on with our lives, not yet aware if our own particular ending will come in the form of Big Pun’s “It’s So Hard”, should it come far too soon, or that of Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”, where beating the odds long enough finally leads to wearing out your welcome for good.

Rest In Peace to them all…