Dilla Time – The Discography

I’m currently reading Dan Charnas’ excellent Dilla Time, a biography of acclaimed Hip Hop producer J Dilla and his music. In the book, Charnas makes extensive references to a vast number of songs—songs that influenced J Dilla’s work, songs that he sampled, and songs that were influenced by J Dilla.

The book’s experience is better when you listen to the tracks while reading. I started keeping a list of all the songs and put them in a playlist in Spotify for my reference and your pleasure. The list contains 83 tracks (so far, I’m still reading so it continues to grow), lasting 5 hours and 30 minutes.

It’s an astonishing body of music spanning different musical eras and genres, and containing many classics but also obscure tracks. Remember, at Dilla’s time, hip hop tracks were produced by sampling snippets from records, actual vinyl records—and now imagine that record collection!