In 2006, during the time period of February 7th through the 10th, I lived on Parker in Berkeley, three blocks from Amoeba Records on Telegraph, still my favorite building in the East Bay. The 7th was another "new release Tuesday," and when a new release by an artist I've been meaning to check out appears on the Amoeba display, sometimes I consider that a sign that It Is Time. That day, it was Donuts by J Dilla (AKA Jay Dee, nee James Yancey). There were two blurbs on the front sticker. I remember the one from Kanye West: "Dilla is a drum god. His drums can't ever be topped." I've never considered myself an outright fan of Kanye's; it must have been the other blurb that sold me, that plus the fact that I'd been hearing the name Jay Dee from my college roommate Ben for years, and of course from uncountable other sources as well. Recently, in fact, I'd heard a track by R&B singer Steve Spacek called "Dollar" which featured Dilla's baffling, experimental production technique on a sample, far more fascinating than the vocals on top. All this added up; I walked out with the CD and less money.

On February 8, I listened to J Dilla's Donuts for the second or third time, walking down Parker westbound, and you could have mistaken me for being a sweepstakes winner, so wide was the grin on my face, such was I occasionally laughing to myself while thinking, "Hip hop is cracking open for me like never before." I knew instantly I was ready to explore this man's work. I knew this was the start of an obsession. The thought process behind Donuts was apparently, startlingly something I did not expect. To me, it was a gate opening to a genre, a style, a mindset to feel and admire. I'd listened to and appreciated plenty of hip hop in my life prior to that point -- I'd been known to refer to Tribe's Midnight Marauders and even Enter the Wu-Tang as amongst my favorite records -- but Donuts, as a piece, was easily and immediately the most inviting hip hop record I'd heard to that date. I, for your reference, am a young white male musician with an interest in rhythmic and contrapuntal exploration, mainly, but a nonetheless high appreciation for humor, attitude and culture. All of these things were present and in full effect on this CD, a sampling project that is transparent but not simple, simple but not transparent.

What was becoming clearer and clearer to me, with the grin on my face, was the fact of J Dilla achieving a nearly impossible task over and over again during Donuts' running length. I'd never heard many of the originals, but hearing what he did with Raymond Scott's "Lightworks" (such a great idea for a source), possibly the only original track I knew for sure on the disc at first, I was slack-jaw impressed and could only imagine the way he eviscerated from the rest of his sources only to resurrect them as "donuts." By now, I've heard many of the sources. Imagine a song as an image; now, imagine someone cutting that image into jigsaw pieces, and rearranging it into a new picture, and imagine that you have no idea how they thought to do it, and that the results might fill you with awe. This is what it's like to listen to 10cc's "The Worst Band in the World" and then listen to J Dilla's "Workinonit." This is what it's like to listen to the Jackson 5's "Dancin' Machine" and then listen to Dilla's beat for Q-Tip's "Move." This is not the only thing he did well -- he was an instrumentalist, as well, playing keys and drums; he was even, a bit controversially, an MC -- but this is the way of Donuts and some of his best later efforts. Voices disappear and reappear; arrangements surprise on the 200th listen; the pacing never lags; it is plain and it is magic.

By the night of February 10, I'd been talking a lot about Donuts, as I do when I'm immensely into something. Somewhere on the internet, all at roughly the same time, I then learned three things. One was that the day J Dilla released Donuts, that week's Tuesday, February 7, 2006, was his 32nd birthday. Another was that J Dilla had actually been rather ill, sort of mysteriously. He'd been seen in public in wheelchairs, and he was in a hospital bed with records and an MPC sampler while making Donuts. The third was that, as of that day, J Dilla was -- is -- dead.

No other news has yet affected me the precise way that news did. One day, Laurie Anderson will die; one day, David Bowie will die; one day, probably sooner than both of those, Woody Allen will die. These are some of my favorite artists, and they will most likely die while I'm alive. None of my favorite living artists, however, have yet died in my conscious adult lifetime; in fact, many of them are still working. J Dilla was three very swiftly-acting days into becoming one of my favorite artists when he kicked, and he was so young that he had a decent chance of outliving ME. I can still remember being nearly breathtaken, learning of the very, very untimely end for a young genius whose works were an iceberg upon whose tip I'd just stumbled. My night was ruined.

At least I was already on the path, so I can say it wasn't solely because of his death that I was quickly tracking down his other work. The three unreleased beat CDs he made leading up to Donuts are goldmines, as combined, they show an evolution, with the Motown sampling on the third CD pointing to the approach behind his masterpiece. ?uestlove's various Jay-centric writings drove me to find those, particularly his inspiring post from the month of his death, better than any other eulogy I've read, entitled J Dilla lives, in which he lists the top 71 Dilla moments from his perspective, mostly songs or parts of songs. (I still haven't heard them all.) Meanwhile, with the help of my friends and more internet research, I began to identify which rap songs I'd both already heard and still needed to hear that featured the invaluable production of Mr. Dee. So many gems. Truly.

But in my pantheon, Donuts is and will always be it. It is now in my top five albums of all time, easily. I've spent what feels like eons inside of it. No matter how many posthumous releases there are, Donuts will always be the ultimate, final testament of Dilla. Chances are, he knew he was dying. He "wrote" it in the hospital bed and released it on his birthday; it didn't have to be his final statement -- and I, and thousands of others, sure as hell wish it weren't -- but it is, and it is even more poignant for that, with its dismebodied voices and vinyl crackles calling out from his convalescent room. That's James, telling you via the voices of Motown singers that "you're gonna want me back/ you're gonna need me one day," and "I can't stand to see you cry." Three years later, he's gotten more exposure than ever, and we're lucky there's so much he's put out for sifting and delving, because that's the sad way of death, and taking people for granted in living. Of course, he already told you about that, too, via Joni Mitchell and Janet Jackson. (Yep -- that was Dilla.)

So: February 10 is the three-year anniversary of his death, but February 7 is the also the third anniversary of Donuts, and his 35th birthday. Don't get dead; celebrate being born. Go to your local favorite building. Get Donuts.