This record is one that's really close to my heart for several reasons. I wasn't deeply familiar with all the amazing work J Dilla had done throughout his career. When Donuts came out it was a massive release, and I was just learning about his battle with lupus and him succumbing to it. It was the feeling of discovering a whole new universe only to find out it was ending just as it was unraveling.
Donuts is the epitome of hip hop beatmaking. The samples he chose and the way he flipped them represent the kind of thing that lives in every beatmaker's mind, but that very few, or really none but one, were ever able to pull out of their samplers the way they heard it in their head. That's Donuts. It solidified J Dilla as the beatmaker's beatmaker. Your favorite producer's favorite producer. The best to ever do it. I don't think that can even be debated at this point.
To later learn that people close to him felt Donuts was a goodbye made it hit entirely differently. It's a profound way to approach the album. Just imagining J Dilla in the light that was his life, through the accounts of his mother and fellow artists, he seems like the kind of person you'd have loved to be around. To just sit in his studio and watch him work. I can't imagine the void that filled the lives of everyone close to him and that still does. That was the weight of his presence. This is without question one of my top five hip hop albums of all time.
J Dilla, rest in peace. Rest in power. We will always miss you. To the dopest crate digger and beatmaker the world may have ever known.
Released: 2006 on Stones Throw Records
Review by: Def Wax