Hear the Lead Track From J Dilla’s Lost Vocal Album, ‘The Diary’
After nearly 15 years of label troubles, legal battles, file rescuing and sample clearing, J Dilla’s lost 2002 vocal album The Diary is finally seeing release on April 15th. Originally recorded for MCA, the iconic beatmaker, who passed away in 2006, had recruited a slew of producers to help create the 14-track LP — its beats are by Pete Rock, Madlib, Hi-Tek, Supa Dave West, Bink!, House Shoes, Nottz, Karriem Riggins and, of course, Dilla himself.
Though it follows a decade of posthumous releases of varying quality, Dilla estate creative director and former Stones Throw general manager Eothen “Egon” Alapatt tells Rolling Stone that The Diary is “the last record that he actually wanted out — i.e., he said, in his own words, this record should come out during his lifetime. The last one.” To get it out, Alapatt and Dilla’s estate have relaunched the PayJay Records imprint, who will be releasing it in conjunction with Mass Appeal.
Although the album features Dilla 12-inch classics like “Fuck the Police,” tracks like opener “The Introduction” — which you can hear below — have never been released. Rolling Stone talked to Alapatt about what should be a chapter-closing landmark for one of our generation’s most beloved and influential producers.
Six of these tracks have already surfaced as PayJay singles…
Yeah, basically what happened was I needed to try to come up with funds to assemble this album and Dilla, as many people know, died with a tremendous debt to the IRS, a debt which still hasn’t been paid. So I was put in the awkward position of finally being able to assemble this record, but I had to come up with the funds to do it.
Why didn’t this come out originally?
He was in a really difficult place when he was dropped from MCA. Largely because he had taken such a risk in assembling and producing this record the way that he had. He did the entire record on his own, almost exclusively in Detroit, at studios of his choosing, with no involvement from anybody, with the exception of, what I can tell, Wendy Goldstein, who signed him. … It was probably pretty heartbreaking for him to see this record shelved and it was completely out of his control. He was dropped. When majors drop artists, they largely do so unceremoniously and there’s usually a lot of blood on the floor. But with Dilla it became really obvious that it had to been at least a bit of a trauma to him, because his reaction to it was, of course, the Ruff Draft record, Jaylib and ultimately a move to California, where he attempted to recalibrate his career. And actually, many would argue he did with the release of Donuts.
Do you think MCA balked at the record because he was known primarily as a beatmaker and he delivered this vocal record with a bunch of other producers?
I think it was completely unexpected. Think about this, you’re going to sign J Dilla, right? Not many people knew who J Dilla was in the late Nineties and early 2000s. … There were people like ?uestlove and D’Angelo and all of the people who worked with him behind the scenes, who knew how special he was. Most people who are thinking about Dilla in the music industry were thinking about the guy who made hits like “The Light” for Common, you know? … But the fact that Dilla was going to bring Madlib out to Detroit and pay him the same thing he was going to pay, say Bink! or Supa Dave West, who at that point were getting paid a shit-ton of money to make beats. Unheard of. I mean. Who wants that? Who wants Madlib? We want the guy that made “The Light.” We need some radio records. Here’s Dilla rapping about making his chain swing over a Madlib loop. To me, it was genius. When I heard that track, I couldn’t believe that Dilla was going to do that. It was mind-blowing to me. … Imagine that, right? J Dilla does a song called “Fuck the Police” over a killer library loop, but a loop nonetheless. He puts that out as a 12-inch single. So when we heard “Fuck the Police,” it came out of nowhere. But it turns out this was actually part of this process.