J Dilla

Donuts

Donuts is a joy, from start to finish – amazing given the circumstances of its creation ... It’s entirely instrumental, sampled snatches of vocals aside, and yet feels like a really personal statement, a beyond-satisfying epilogue of sorts.

Donuts is a big black pot of sonics, comparable only to Madlib's 2002 effort, Blunted in the Bombshelter, the difference being that this is all original material.

Where Champion Sound built and expanded on Dilla's signature champion sound, Donuts blasts off into the sonic stratosphere, straying far from his trademark neck-snapping drums, dirty keyboards, and backward melodies in favor of stream-of-consciousness weirdness and free-associative sonic experimentation.

Like the titular snack, Dilla’s Donuts are best shared, and the late great one brought 31 treats for his fellows to sample.

Even if ... it never quite adds up to more than the sum of its parts, it's never less than a pleasure to listen to.

Donuts is an album that is as deep in soul as it is wide in funk.

Even if you don’t know your Pollution II from your Population II records, Donuts still makes for a helluva head-nodding mix.

It's Dilla's show-and-tell method, however, that's most effective, because it illustrates how he's, more or less, upgrading soul music-- we get to see how he unpacked its bag, what spots he told it it missed ... In that sense, Donuts is pure postmodern art-- which was hip-hop's aim in the first place.