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Busta Rhymes discussed the fundamentals of his new album “Dillagence II” last night at Los Angeles’ Grammy Museum, breaking down a handful of key tracks during a Q&A
with musician Anderson .Paak and performing a string of his greatest hits along with a guest appearance from Common.
On “Dillagence II,” which was released in August, Rhymes raps over a spate of beats from the late James “J Dilla” Yancey, who died in 2006. At the Grammy Museum, he began by admitting that the weight of the moment had caught up with him and sharing appreciation for all the folks in attendance including Dilla’s mother Ma Dukes, music executive Sylvia Rhone, manager Mona Scott-Young and musician Jimmy Jam.
“I’m emotional tonight. Shed a little tear backstage,” he said. “To be able to be in this room tonight and know that I’m being given this opportunity to share and to articulate and to be vulnerable, it’s a fucking amazing feeling.”
.Paak, who is featured on the album alongside special guests D’Angelo, Ludacris, Lil Wayne, Jon Batiste and more, set the foundation for the discussion by asking about hearing the unreleased instrumentals that ended up on “Dillagence II” for the first time and then executive producing them for the album.
“Interestingly, a lot of the beats that I have, he personally gave them to me. Dilla always gave these beat CDs that had 25 beats on them,” said Rhymes, discussing how the tapes would always feature beats that would fade in and out, making it difficult for him to loop them into full tracks. He recalled visiting Dilla at his mother’s home in Detroit amid his health struggles and how she basically became his engineer as he dealt with physical complications.
“Ma Dukes is Ma. And then Ma Dukes is also Busta Rhymes’ Ma in their home,” he said. “She cooked food for us. She engineers Dilla. She goes and finds the record he wants to sample from the alphabetically ordered record collection in the coat closet. And then he would make my beat CDs based on the beats that he would make that day and send me home with it. And I would live with these records over the years. Sometimes the beats were so incredible, I would actually be scared to rhyme on them because I didn’t want to mess up the way the beat was as far as how dope I thought it was.”
Rhymes then discussed the particulars of several tracks on “Dillagence II” including “This Woman” featuring D’Angelo, recalling how he received the late singer’s vocals in February and laid down his rhymes that day. .Paak also asked him about “What We Got in Common” with Common and Batiste and their own collaboration “Kingpin (Knock Ya Head Off),” which also features Ludacris.
Near the end of their conversation, .Paak asked Rhymes what it would mean for “Dillagence II” to get recognition from the Recording Academy, considering he has been nominated 12 times but hasn’t won. “What it would mean is beyond what I could actually describe, especially doing an album where every beat is a beat. I actually created an album that was a moment that was captured in time. Like, I don’t think y’all understand. I’m a hoarder of production, right? I have these long relationships with many incredible producers and artists that’s still popping now, right?”
He named a few producers who had given him scores of beats — the Neptunes, Swizz Beatz, Timbaland — and said that he wouldn’t give them back if asked because they’re “moments in time that you can’t even recreate.” “The most incredible part about these moments is a lot of the shit that they was doing was timeless,” he said. “And that’s what Dilla did. Every production from him is older than 20 years old. But it now has Cascade dishwasher liquid sparkle all around it. And it makes the magic so beautiful because what he did is timeless. What we’re giving it is now and it is the proper ingredients to add to what he was having marinate with his seasonings. So when we finally put it in a stove and feed it to the street, nothing about it feels like 20 years ago.”
To cap off the evening, Rhymes gave a 30-minute performance of his classics including “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,” “I Know What You Want” and “Break Ya Neck,” alongside new cuts like “Talk Ya Shit” and “What We Got in Common,” where he was joined by Common. He then brought out Ma Dukes to thank her for giving her blessing for “Dillagence II.”
“This gift that we experienced with this project, and everything that I’ve been able to do from 30 years ago on my first solo album to today, and everything that we’re gonna continue to do, is with the grace and the blessing of the Yancey family and the estate,” he said. “I want to say thank you, Ma Dukes, beyond description, words cannot be found to describe how much I love you.”
