Why does Stylus keep dissing Dilla for being dead?

Jul 17, 2007

Why does Stylus keep dissing Dilla for being dead? · by Rafi Kam

Media chin-check

My eyes kind of glossed over after reading the first paragraph of Stylus’ Champion Sound review this morning.

It says:

adlib has made his career as the reefer-toting madman behind the boards of indie-rap’s elite, pumping pulp samples and squeaking out random phrases as his alter ego Quasimoto. His stutter stepping, minimalist beats are almost immediately recognizable and possibly some of the most difficult to flow over. J Dilla, on the other hand, made his career in a much different fashion. He died.

Got that? Despite a discography reaching back to the early 90s, and having produced for Tribe, Common, De La, Pharcyde before anyone even knew the name Madlib, Dilla’s career was apparently made when he passed away last year.

WTF Stylus? Your writers are of course entitled to their opinions but shouldn’t an editor take care of glaring factual inaccuracies.

Then I remembered the last time I saw Stylus mention Dilla. It was in a Dalek review and a different writer damned 2006’s rap album crop by saying the “runaway undie pick of the year was a sample collage assembled by a dead guy”.

At the time I said:

True as that may be, it seems a weird way to reference him even given the point being made (the lack of lyrics on Donuts). It’s a phrase I somehow doubt we will ever find in a Dilla review at the same site.

I guess I was wrong about that. They were careless and disrespectful enough to fault him for being dead in an actual review of his work. I thought the “dead guy” remark in poor taste but more than anything I found it a bit hypocritical to turn on the album or try and fault it for its circumstances.

So we have two writers from Stylus that have basically dissed Dilla first for being “a dead guy” and now with the false claim that he made his career by dying.

Sure, there’s a frequently observed lionizing of deceased artists and people just love to backlash against that to feel superior over the masses. Maybe these writers think they’re being clever or outrageous but this is Stylus not Bol we’re talking about. Keep your day job kids.

Comments for "Why does Stylus keep dissing Dilla for being dead?"

Stylus sucks.

— Hashim Jul 17, 12:55 PM
Those quotes from that article are just in bad taste, I can’t stand the “lionization” as you noted above, but refering to him as “A Dead Guy” is pretty foul. They should have at least SOME respect for the dead. Its obvious they are trying really hard to distance themselves from the fanboys blindly following Dilla after his passing, but man their attempt to trivialize Dilla to a footnote which he CLEARLY is not, is really pathetic and speaks alot to their obvious LACK of journalistic integrity.

— matthew Jul 17, 12:59 PM
yeah fuck that site not that i have ever been there before but at least now i know not to go

— abernstein Jul 17, 01:22 PM
It’s not just an exaggerated response to those jumping on the bandwagon after he died; Jaydee had tons of Okayplayer and backpacker fans, who are like the plague to indie-rock centric rap critics.

— eauhellzgnaw Jul 17, 01:28 PM
Respect to Dilla. I don’t know who they are, but they obviously don’t know who Dilla STILL IS to his fans, so from me…Stylus can eat a dick.

— Gezzius Jul 17, 02:22 PM
Yeah, fuck Stylus.

That’s the first and last time I’ve been on their site. It looks boring.

— Clyde Smith Jul 17, 02:48 PM
Yeah… an awkward and inappropriately contrarian response to the Dilla lionization.

Also, Dilla, especially ‘Donuts’, ‘The Shining’ (at least the beats), and even ‘Ruff Draft’ are not “cool” music in a way that Stylus can appreciate. It’s not stoned-out A.D.D madness with funny Melvin Van Peebles samples. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but Dilla’s work, doesn’t stand-out. It’s subtle and slowly works its way into your head. Basically, Dilla didn’t make sexy (no homo), attractive-to-music critics music.

— brandonsoderberg Jul 17, 03:20 PM
attention-craving and myopic, but if they’d subbed “internet household name status” in for “career,” that wouldn’t really be crossing the line.

— Brick Cheney Jul 17, 04:08 PM
Brandon, I think you’re on to something, but I’d say that holds more for his Tribe/SV/Com stuff.

You’d think that the weirdo vocal samples throughout The Shinin and Donuts (as well as the tempo changes on the latter) would be enough.

I can see the soul-heavy stuff on Donuts not being “sexy” enough for them, but if they go nuts over breaks mixes by Cut Chemist and Shadow, why wouldn’t they dig “Time” “People” “Twister” “Anti-American Graffiti” for instance?

— eauhellzgnaw Jul 17, 05:46 PM
Eau-
Yeah, true about the rap beat, especially the last tribe album, in my opinion.

It’s music so its real tough to articulate in words but there’s something just less overly-dramatic and THERE with Dilla than with Shadow and Cut Chemist.

I think ‘Donuts’ gives the illusion of being underwhelming but rewarding ultimately, while a lot of instrumental hip-hop is real cool and cinematic the first time you hear it but, less so each time. A lot of people like gimmicks and Dilla doesnt offer gimmicks.

‘So Far to Go’ from ‘The Shining’ for example, is a really laid-back almost Richard ‘Groove Holmes updated to 2006 style song which isn’t cool for most. ‘Geek Down’ with its funny kazoos or even the Giorgio Moroder sampling tracks might appeal but the aforementioned track, or ‘Baby’ or ‘Love’ just won’t…

If all of ‘Donuts’ was as structured and straightforward as ‘Workinonit’ I think they’d love him. But instead he’s restrained and subtle. Dilla was more interested in like, bubbling a vocal sample of “wake up world, give peace a chance” under a track for 30 seconds before you clearly hear it than giving you some DJ Shadow drums of death.

— brandonsoderberg Jul 17, 06:14 PM
this new age journalism of not taking stock and proper account of information before spewing is mindboggling to say the least..

I’m right there with you raf’

— esbee Jul 17, 06:58 PM
It’s impressive that the beats for “Baby” and “Love” are so nice given that Jaydee only started working heavily with strings on his last albums.

But these critics love choppiness and layers. Slighting the production because it’s not synth-y or “exotic” doesn’t make much sense to me.

— eauhellzgnaw Jul 17, 07:56 PM
While certainly the comments in Stylus were foul as hell, the basic statement that Dilla got “famous” after his death isn’t really thaaaat far off.
While I was certainly aware of him before his death and enjoyed the music that I heard of him, I kind of knew him more by reputation as the guy who “ruined” Tribe after the “People’s-Low End Theory-Marauders” Trilogy than anything else. (Unfair assessment or not. I’ve never listened to Love Movement so I can’t really say.) So it was little bit of a shock to me, to hear all these assessments by a lot of people to describe him as one of the greats of all-time. I think Dilla’s profile grew exponentially since his death as fucked up as tha sounds. He’s gotten a hell of lot more famous since his death than before. I never really considered him to be on the same level as the “Primo-RZA-Pete Rock” trinity(with gigantic due respects to Dr. Dre) before his death in terms of greatness but I can see why some would say that. If that severely dents my hip hop cred than so be it. Still, Dilla’s pretty great even without the proper acknowlegment and Stylus is pretty foul for printing that even if it were true.
— DocZeus Jul 17, 08:21 PM
yeh i will agree with your Tribe assesment, but his quality contributions to rap production far outweigh his misses… I mean the Janet single he did by itself is still probably one of the only janet jackson singles I can listen to. Add to that his production with Pharcyde and his Slum Village work and his catalog look pretty solid. Its not that I think he is even close to one of the greatest producers, but to dicount him to merely being a dead guy is ridiculous. And if you are in the camp saying that he wasn’t important until he died, then you probably really never listened to him before he did pass. Just sayin. This article is waaay out of line in its stance. Plus the writer is just plain garbage. But then again thats pobably why he writes for “stylus”. gag.

— matthew Jul 17, 08:49 PM
Ugghhh, I don’t know much about Stylus, but I just went on their site, did a search for “Dilla” and this a pretty good review of “The Shining” came up. Nowhere is he referred to in a disrespectful way.

— 5252 Jul 17, 09:19 PM
I’m not saying that Dilla isn’t great or that he wasn’t even important. I’m just saying in some respects his profile was raised a lot after his death. There’s a lot of great stuff that I really liked that I didn’t even know was Dilla.

— DocZeus Jul 18, 01:08 AM
“There’s a lot of great stuff that I really liked that I didn’t even know was Dilla.”
Right, when I mentioned his death to a couple of casual listeners they went “who’s that?”. I told them some of the stuff he produced and they were blown away; “That’s all the same dude? He’s ill!”. I even got that myself a couple of times too. That, and the fact that artists always get more recognition after death probably explains a lot of the rise in popularity. I guess “You don’t know what you got ‘till it’s gone”.

Post-mortem fame rising or not, it’s very disresepctful and very foolish to disregard the man’s legacy like that. Stylus sucks.

— J to the AAP Jul 18, 04:15 AM
Give me a 40 and a plane ticket and I’ll fly to wherever Stylus is located and piss on their shit on broad daylight while rocking my OhWord.com Dilla t-shirt. Fuck those hoes. I’ll even film it for YouTube.

— DJ Flash Jul 18, 04:15 AM
fuck stylus, straight up. just off the fact that they seriously thought it made sense to put a line like that in their review. if they did a 30second google search on dilla, found his discog over @ stones throw, and saw wtf he actually contributed to the game, they might not have done that. or maybe they were trying to get more hits?

shit, champion sound helped make dilla’s career!

— khal Jul 18, 08:44 AM
Yeah, just like Stylus doesn’t know anything about Dilla, ya’ll don’t know anything about Stylus either, so shut the fuck up. As someone pointed above, there are other reviews on there of Dilla (and I also found an RIP peace, so suck that, haters) and none of them have anything to do with him being dead. If you’re gonna take them to task for not giving Dilla credit and checking facts, MAYBE YOU FUCKHEADS SHOULD CHECK THE FACTS TOO. YOU DID THE EXACT SAME THING THAT THEY DID. Hypocrites, the whole lot of you.

— djv Jul 18, 03:50 PM
djv, are you kidding me? I read the Dilla reviews before I made my first comment back in March. That’s why I said in the piece something like “they would never say this in one of their reviews of him”. Because I say they were positive respectful reviews.

I’m the guy who compiled all the web’s Dilla tribute pieces last February so that’s why I again thought it was odd to see this kind of derisive writing in a legit review source. Note the original post doesn’t really shit on Stylus… the commenters did that.

Did you at some point read me saying something like “Stylus has been on a years-long quest to shit on Dilla” ?

Let me explain something to you… time is linear.

So the fact that they didn’t piss on him last year doesn’t really offset the fact that they did this year.

And I’m not saying they have any kind of planned agenda… I’m just observing two insulting phrasings in the past two times I saw them mention Dilla. It’s most likely just a sloppy lack of editing than anything else. But still it came off a certain way to me.

If you think that makes me a fuckhead, so be it.

But get the fuck out of here about checking my facts. I didn’t say anything untrue.

— Rafi Jul 19, 11:45 PM
I agree the opening paragraph is fucked-up… Dilla certainly made his name by merit. He was a better producer by far than MadLib IMHO but I accept that that’s open to debate.

Where the review does nail him though is that neither producer should have stepped to the mic.

— Analogue Jul 24, 10:21 AM