... a 400-page biography out Feb. 1 that thoroughly examines the hip-hop producer’s unique approach ... Over the years, there has been almost a deification of Dilla; Charnas’s book takes great efforts to humanize him. Though he is sympathetic to his subject’s struggles—particularly his misfortunes as an artist in the major label system and his deteriorating health—Charnas does not shy away from describing his imperfections ... One of the foundational Dilla myths is how he arrived at his signature sound, in which the rhythm can feel off, different or just wrong. Some have said it was a failure to quantize his compositions, a feature in digital recording that eliminates human error and puts the timing of drum beats in their 'correct' place. Charnas explains that Dilla’s process was more complex and that he took multiple steps to purposefully accentuate the sonic effects of error ... Charnas also clarifies the story around Donuts, an instrumental album that Stones Throw Records released right before Dilla’s death that has become a key entry point for new generations of fans.
If all of this seems extremely technical, trust that as Charnas offers examples and invitations to clap-along, you’ll soon hear—or rather feel—the beats landing slightly off-time ... This is where Charnas’ book excels. It puts Dilla at the centre of a revolution still resonating today, casting Dilla as an artist that added a human touch to machine music, brought emotion to the monotonous twos-and-fours. While at times overly technical and certainly too long, Dilla Time places the producer at the centre of a musical revolution as big as anything from the last century. Few musicians have influenced music like Dilla, and now we can truly understand how.
... a detailed, well-researched, and passionate analysis of the music and life of the influential hip-hop composer, producer, and musician James Dewitt Yancey, aka Jay Dee or J Dilla. Charnas has written not simply a biography but, rather, an unconventional, journalistic documentation of musical sounds and their progressions in history and culture, whether originating in Africa, Europe, or elsewhere.
... exceptional ... Charnas has done well to untangle the ever evolving skein of art and money and family and friends his legend encompasses. Nor is that all Dilla Time achieves. Almost incidentally but also crucially, it also lays out the evolving culture and geography of African-American Detroit from Henry Ford through Motown through the 20-year mayoralty of progressive Coleman Young through the shrinkage that only accelerated after Young left office in 1994. Dilla didn’t grow up poor, but neither was he middle class, and Charnas diligently traces the shifting employment history and stalwart entrepreneurship of a family that never managed to convert its considerable musical gifts into a living wage while imbuing young James with music that turned out to be like no other ... Just on a sociological level, then, this is a rich read. But deeply and vividly reported though it is...that’s just background. Dilla’s seismic innovations were rhythmic, so Charnas and Jeff Peretz, his colleague at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, fashioned a system of grid-based musical annotation based on rhythm rather than pitch.
... a music book that’s actually about the stuff of music ... Musicologist Jeff Peretz helped Charnas create charts that illustrate where Dilla’s programming choices land within the grid of a time signature. Peretz did not prevent Charnas, however, from overselling Dilla’s innovations and crushing out a little too hard ... But I get it. Charnas isn’t wrong about the musicians who wanted to hear time the way Dilla heard it ... might read like a brilliant two-hundred-fifty-page book trapped inside a solid four-hundred-page one. But reliving Dilla’s rise through it allowed me to feel a bit of what his friends must have felt, watching a man who arranged all the Cokes in the fridge symmetrically make a fully formed song in minutes, and then sit back down, surrounded by towers of records he knew, and loved, and sometimes improved.
... the sort of biography that makes you reconsider the body of work of an artist who you long knew was a genius. Charnas writes with an enthusiasm that shows a profound appreciation for his subject, but his deep dive into the history and place that made Dilla is what makes the book so engrossing. Charnas’s book is about Dilla as much as it is about Detroit, and the sounds and music icons his native city produced while, before, and after Dilla’s lifetime ... Charnas’s book gave me exactly what I needed now—a larger context, along with concrete lessons, and iIlustrations of musical notations that explain the science of Dilla’s art. Charnas paints the full picture of a brilliant kid from Detroit and a city that has given so much to American music.
... is in large part a straightforward biography, whose subject doesn’t come out of it altogether sympathetically ... Charnas’s book isn’t only, or even chiefly, about the complexities of the man, though it makes room for them. It is mostly about the complexities of his music. Charnas doesn’t get too technical, but his analysis of those basement-crafted beats is incisive ... What Charnas doesn’t explain is quite why all this happened. Why did Dilla’s music – a lot of it is quite strange music, not at all straightforwardly appealing – have such a profound effect on people?
... engrossing ... In a narrative that is part biography and part music history lesson, Charnas offers a straightforward and simple answer to the question of J Dilla’s musical reputation: he is revered because he 'transformed the sound of popular music in a way that his more famous peers have not.' Charnas means this literally ... At 458 pages, Charnas’s book suffers from more than a few longeurs, like a ten-page account of Roger Linn’s development of the LM-1 drum machine, or a seven-page history of the city planning of Detroit...Still, Charnas’s fastidious attention to detail is that of the enthusiast, not the pedant; Dilla Time trembles with love for its subject — not just J Dilla, but the whole history of hip-hop, especially the development of the genre’s production techniques, explained and sometimes illustrated in generous detail ... But while admiring, Charnas’s portrait is not particularly flattering ... Yet for all the virtues of Dilla Time, a book can only ever be an auxiliary conduit to J Dilla, or any other musician, for that matter. The best and only way of getting to know him is through his music ... What’s more, Charnas’s answer to the question of J Dilla’s posthumous reputation, while persuasive, feels incomplete. Surely the reason such a cult of fandom has been built up around Dilla is not only because of his technical innovation. Why is he celebrated every February? Why do so many people profess such love for him? Why do I?
Set against the atmospheric panorama of Detroit’s rap scene, Charnas’s probing narrative follows Dilla’s ascent through the hip-hop ranks ... Charnas’s account is no hagiography: here, Dilla is a canny and sometimes generous, but prickly figure, not a Tupac-style prophet. And there are some rather moving passages, especially in scenes of Dilla’s mother, Maureen, tending to him in his decline. The book’s heart is its rich, evocative musicological analysis, complete with rhythm diagrams, of Dilla’s beats ... Charnas’s engrossing work is one of the few hip-hop sagas to take the music as seriously as its maker.
... an ambitious, dynamic biography of J Dilla ... he author’s discussion of Dilla’s decline and death from a rare blood disease and lupus is particularly heart-wrenching, especially against the backdrop of his blooming career. Also memorable is Charnas’ chronicle of the family in-fighting that followed his death, which even spilled over into lawsuits against fan-created fundraisers at a time when Dilla’s work was finally being celebrated around the world. A wide-ranging biography that fully captures the subject’s ingenuity, originality, and musical genius.
