CAT. STP–011 FSG · 2022

17

the selected discography

Charnas’s own back matter, entire and in his order — including every record the chapters never mention

as a recording artist · 31

Released under his own names — Jay Dee, J-88, Jaylib, J Dilla — and posthumously

as a producer · 255

What he made for other people, from a Detroit twelve-inch in 1993 onward

as a musician or vocalist · 19

The records where he played or sang rather than programmed

the batches · 8

Collections of raw beats that acquired names as they travelled

← 16. Fragmentscontents

dilla time

An unofficial reader’s listening guide to Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm by Dan Charnas (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).

Every record here is from the book’s own Selected Discography, in its four sections and its order. Years, labels and credits are Charnas’s, uncorrected. Where the chapters discuss a record, the sentence that does is quoted beside it and the chapter named; where they do not, the record is listed without one. That is most of them — the discography reaches every posthumous release and the story stops at his death.

The chapters carry what the book names, in the order it names it. A record is here because Charnas lists it in his own discography, or because MusicBrainz has a release of that name credited to somebody the passage names — that second test is what lets the guide carry the music around J Dilla as well as his own. Years and labels are shown only where Charnas gave them.

Releases are set in italic and tracks in roman, which is the book’s own way of telling them apart. A track that came off a particular record says so underneath.

Links run YouTube searches, so they resolve in any country. Records belong to their artists and labels; the drawings here are original work in the jacket’s idiom.

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