Album Review: J Dilla - Dillatronic
By Jonathan Fuchs, Contributor
[Vintage Vibez Music Group; 2015]
Rating: 3.5/5
Key Tracks: “Dillatronic 22,” “Dillatronic 31,” “Dillatronic 41”
James Yancey (also known as J Dilla) will forever be known as one of the greatest hip-hop producers of all time. His influence on other hip-hop producers is staggering, and he worked with legendary names in hip-hop like The Roots, A Tribe Called Quest and Busta Rhymes. During his career, he made thousands of beats and albums like Donuts, which is considered one of the best instrumental hip-hop albums ever made.
Dilla’s 2006 death was a huge tragedy in the hip-hop world and since then, many compilations of Dilla’s old work have been released to keep his spirit alive and to continue offering fans unreleased music.
The latest compilation is Dillatronic, a collection of 41 short, looped rare tracks that, despite their lack of length and complexity, are fun to listen to and contain some great samples.
The beats on Dillatronic are very smooth and through its tight kicks and synths, give off a style similar to classic Moog synthesizers, early 1980s computers and even retro Atari video games. These features make the tracks very exciting and different from anything put out this year.
While many of the longer instrumentals sound amazing and true to J Dilla’s sound, there are many others that are so short, you question why they are in this compilation in the first place. Thanks to their length of under a minute, these instrumentals come and go, and seem like they are put in the mix just to kill time.
Although Dillatronic isn’t as special as other Dilla compilations and feature some unnecessarily short tracks, fans of J Dilla and hip-hop will enjoy it and be pleased that it shows off Dilla’s talents and brilliance as a producer.
