Dan Charnas
Dan Charnas’s Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm
For music journalist Dan Charnas, telling J Dilla’s story was a personal quest. Dilla, the highly influential rap producer, died in 2006. “In the 15 years since his death, journalists and academics have written about him, and musicians have extolled his work,” Charnas says. “But no one had put it all together in a definitive statement: That this beatmaker who worked out of a basement in Detroit literally pioneered a new rhythmic time-feel, one that traditional musicians and electronic producers around the world now use. So, I felt a sense of urgency to recount that story, that innovation, and make that argument so he can have his rightful place in history.” Charnas began his work on Dilla Time in 2017 with a course he taught at the Clive Davis Institute at NYU. “The reporting and research ...
