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J Dilla

Donuts : 45 Box Set

J Dilla’s ‘Donuts’ began simply enough, in the summer of 2005, as an idea to turn a particularly good demo beat tape into a full-length release. It can safely be said that it has since became a classic hip hop album, one of the defining works of the artist’s life. Completed during a year which J Dilla spent mostly in a hospital bed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, ‘Donuts’ would gain particular poignancy when, only three days after it’s release in February 2006, the artist passed away, losing his battle with a rare blood disease.

When first announced late in 2005, the concept of a “rap album without rappers” struck some critics as either a novelty, or a minor break beat album, but ‘Donuts’ would prove to transcend the rigid definitions of what a hip hop album could be. It plays partly like a DJ mix, and partly like a hip hop beat-maker at work, sounding like a producer turning the dial on an imaginary radio station. It’s an unmistakably modern album, and one which perfectly encapsulated the J Dilla’s reputation among his peers and fans as the definitive architect of soulful hip hop.

This new and fiendishly limited edition box set includes the complete album spread over seven 45s, and a bonus single containing ‘Signs’ from the long out-of-print ‘Donuts Fan Club 45’, backed with ‘Sniper Elite’ featuring MF Doom, and ‘Murder Goons’ featuring Ghostface Killah – both are tracks over ‘Donuts’ beats recorded in late 2005 prior to the original release of the album, which were released digitally in 2008, but have never before appeared on vinyl. Also included is ‘Donuts Outro / Intro’, appearing as an interlude at the beginning of ‘The Diff’rence’, which dates back to the first, original sequence of the album.