J Dilla is a lot of things to a lot of different people. To Questlove, Hip Hop historian and drummer of The Roots, Dilla was the GOAT producer bar none. He told XXL, “As far as our definition of Hip Hop production is concerned – as far as making beats – Dilla is absolutely without peer.”
To Allday, a party promoter, graphic designer, and DJ in Taiwan, J Dilla’s had that secret sauce. “To me, he added that human touch, the soul to drums that was missing with all the quantized sounds. I feel he was a genius and innovator of slicing up samples and using all different parts of a sample in nonsequential order. He definitely influenced a whole school of underground Hip Hop production and a sound that lives on today.”
Allday is such a fan that he’s throwing XiéXié James, a Dilla-inspired party on what would have been his 51st birthday on Friday, February 7. The party is a collab with Stüssy Taipei and will feature six DJs [Allday, Book, DOJADOG, Leona, LAZYFINGA, and KouKou] playing Dilla or Dilla-adjacent music at Higher Ground in Taipei. Rapper and producer Hugo will perform, and there will be gourmet donuts inspired by J Dilla from A Better Coffee & Donut.
To prepare for the party, LiFTED asked Allday to name his top three Dilla tunes. He said, “Three is hard. He made so many classic songs that were the soundtrack to my teens and the start of my DJ life.”
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