For Dilla Day 2022, we celebrate the deceptively deep catalog of daggering wordplay from J Dilla, an innovative producer who demanded to be taken seriously as a rapper.

By 2001, J Dilla was arguably at the height of his power and influence as a producer. Already considered the spiritual and sonic center of The Soulquarians, The Ummah, and a contentiously-named sub-sector of R&B, J Dilla was firmly, albeit reluctantly, the pillar of a movement in Black music striving to simultaneously expand its foundations and the scope of its trajectory. But at a time when hip-hop’s most prestigious musicians, crews, and MCs were clamoring to claim him as their own, Dilla was intensely focused on breaking out from behind the boards as a rapper in his own right.

And he almost got the chance. Not long after the release of “Fuck The Police,” his first single as a solo artist with no affiliations to any collective, Dilla signed with MCA for a two-album deal. Sadly, the label pulled out, scrapped the deal, and folded within the year, taking Dilla’s mainstream debut down with it. Thanks to a benevolent storage unit diver, that project was eventually released in 2016 as The Diary. But critics weren’t exactly glowing over his ability to rap as he was making the case. Though his verses were stitched into the cloth of Slum Village‘s seminal Fan-Tas-Tic Vol.1 and Fan-Tas-Tic Vol. 2, as well as standout tracks on Welcome 2 Detroit and Common‘s Like Water For Chocolate, the pioneering Detroit producer had grown keenly aware of how he was being written off as the frontman of his own work. By 2003, Dilla’s frustrations boiled over on Jaylib’s Champion Sound, where he directs the entire second verse of “The Mission” at journalists panning his command of the mic.

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