Kanye West would not be as popular as he is today if J Dilla was still alive, according to the late producer’s brother Illa J.
Speaking to AnecDope, Illa opined: “If [J Dilla] was still here, music would’ve took a different turn. I don’t think Kanye is as big as he is if my brother stayed alive. I’m sorry, Kanye needs seven producers. If you look at the credits, there’s like 20 producers on one track.”
The Detroit native also theorized what kind of music Dilla would be making today if he hadn’t have died in 2006, saying: “I think he’d be making some crazy trap beats. Obviously, he’d make some Hip Hop stuff but I think he would mess with it all.
“If you listen to the lines he says on songs, he has lines where he [quotes Lil Jon‘s ‘what?!’ ad-lib] so he definitely was always tapped in.”
Watch his comments at the 35:28 mark below.
Kanye West has spoken about J Dilla’s influence on his work on many occasions. In the 2014 Stones Throw documentary Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton, he likened the producer’s beats to “good pussy” and said: “We gotta make music and we think, ‘If Dilla was alive, would he like this?’ I have to work on behalf of Dilla.”
Common also recently recalled watching the two producers “bond” at his home in Los Angeles, which he shared with Dilla in the 2000s.
“Ye came over, it was Mother’s Day. We were going to a Mother’s Day brunch with Ye and his mother and my mother and then Dilla was at the crib. Ye was talking to him and they was just bonding, and then Dilla gave Ye these drums on a record,” he told Hot 97.
Common then described Kanye’s reaction when Dilla gifted him a beat tape: “I promise you, Ye was like, it was the golden chalice. We went to the studio later that day and Ye was telling Gee [Roberson], ‘Yo, Dilla gave me these drums!’”
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He added: “Dilla had a lot of love for Ye. And Ye had love for Dilla. It was great to see somebody who was as great as Ye just be like, ‘Dilla gave me these joints!’”
The influence went both ways as J Dilla’s beloved Donuts album, which he recorded in hospital and released just days before his death, was apparently inspired by the “Through the Wire” hitmaker.
The revelation was shared by Slum Village‘s RJ in an interview with Shirley Ju earlier this year, where he remembered Dilla visiting the video shoot for the group’s 2004 song “Selfish” (which was produced by Kanye) and being taunted by an associate over Ye’s soulful beats.
“He shows up to the video and we sitting back there. A guy named Scrap Dirty like, ‘Man, this your group and you gon’ let Kanye come through and do this? He killing the soul shit!’” RJ said.
“Dilla’s sitting in the stands like, ‘Oh word? That’s what you think?’ He goes back… that’s when you get all the stuff that you heard on Donuts, all the soul stuff. He was making his point that, ‘I’m unfuckwittable.’”
