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Artist: Yianni Mathioudakis (Unsplash)
Dilla Time (2023) by Dan Charnas
Genre: Musician biography that dabbles in music theory and meets the task of communicating its subject’s massive and exciting influence.
Recommended for: Anyone who likes hip-hop or arguably anyone who needs to be convinced that a musician biography can be great.
Buy here or check out at your local library. (Don’t go to the Jeff Bezos website).
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Last night, I stood in a little dive bar I love in Dallas called Double Wide watching a band named the Cactus Blossoms and telling my wife that I was surprised that they weren’t more popular considering how tight their sound was and how much they crib from Tom Petty, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan.
Every 90 seconds or so we checked for updates on our infant son who was with his grandma. He’s been having intense tummy issues; the sort of thing that you have to hope against hope will work itself out one way or another, but it’s hard to see your baby in so much pain with such frequency. And you know grandma thinks she can handle his hooting and hollering, but when she’s not texting back you can’t help but assume she has entered the Thunder Dome.
Still, Double Wide is nearby, and it’s the type of place that makes you feel safe. You bunker up there and they’ll put a disco ball above you and dress up some taxidermy animals with Christmas lights and serve drinks that sound like they’re for children, but they have alcohol. It’s a bar that welcomes and attracts freaks and loud music but is enough of a known establishment to keep normies coming back and keep the two sides mixing. That’s my favorite kind of Dallas.
The Cactus Blossoms are from Minneapolis. There wasn’t anything overtly political about their show, but being huddled in a small enough space with a collection of people who all chose to be somewhere on a cold night is to become conscious of community at a moment when we are simultaneously being numbed to the concept of community and witnessing literal communities being invaded and torn apart as they rely on each other for support and survival and resistance. To leave your house to go see a band that mostly plays nice songs about Being Sad About A Girl or Being Happy About A Girl is not protest. But to resist inertia and make efforts for something in which part of the calculation behind the entire payoff is being around people who want to do the same thing? That’s an act of some kind. When they mentioned they were from Minneapolis, we all knew how much was needed in a fight that’s ongoing. We also knew we needed this. All of us and each of us. There’s always been something like this gathering that I’m talking about in each fight forever and ever. Our son needs us in this time that he’s struggling. But we can’t be there for him the way we need to be if we just let the toll keep getting taken. There’s always been music. To soothe you through the long nights.
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When we got back from the show, I noticed I had a DM from a friend on Bluesky. It said, “Fuuuuuck" with a link to a news story. Michael “5000” Watts had died. The founder of the Houston rap label Swishahouse. You would know Swishahouse primarily from a moment in 2005-2006 when a hyper regional Houston rap scene improbably became a national sensation. The label launched the careers of rappers like Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, Chamillinaire and a number of others. (Last year, I was on Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars podcast talking about Paul Wall’s 2005, and mostly talking about the song “Still Tippin’").
Really what Michael Watts did was take nineties Houston rap, which today is canonized as massively influential, and helped package it to the world, but he did it without the trappings of commodification. Houston hip hop became its own Duolingo for Houston and Texas slang and learning your nineties Houston history was part of the experience.
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You hear a lot about how nineties Houston influenced rappers like Drake, ASAP Rocky and Tyler the Creator; huge swaths of modern pop music. But when you look at their age and the styles of their whole bodies of work, it’s probably more likely that they were influenced by those mid-2000’s Houston rappers, themselves influenced by their predecessors and eager to educate a future generation of rappers around the world about what took place in Houston. Drake might get more clout by suggesting he was influenced by Bun B and Big Moe and not Chamillinoaire but that doesn’t guarantee it’s true. ASAP Rocky wouldn’t want to say that he found DJ Screw existed because he heard Paul Wall say “I’m jammin’ on that Screw” on a Kanye song five years after DJ Screw died, but he would have had to find out about him somehow.
That would all trace back to Michael “5000” Watts. Knowing you have something regional that is so big and so unique and such a world within itself that that the rest of world should be lucky to see it isn’t so much a gift as a hustle. Pack it up and ship it out. Chopped and Screwed music, originated by DJ Screw, is not inherently political by any sense. But it is meant to disrupt your worldview. Among other things, it more or less is created to synchronize audibly what the Houston beverage concoction “lean” does to your brain. Lean is essentially cough syrup and codeine with soda, which slows everything way down. Chopped and screwed music does just that, skillfully, in a way that is designed for driving slowly as well.
This is not about having a revelation. It’s about coping. It’s about relaxing. It’s about giving some sense of triumph and brashness to what exists in your own neighborhood.
Michael Watts was 52 at his death. He was a hero at the very least for the people he made millionaires who would otherwise be nameless.
When people listen to this music, they sometimes need it. It’s unbelievably grim out there. Without casting judgement, lean is a dangerous thing to consume. Listening to Swishahouse records is objectively better for you. And man, it does slow things down for you. Being disoriented by choice.
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Dilla Time is a tremendous work. It’s historical and leaves nothing to be desired in terms of research and interviews concerning J Dilla’s life. And it makes a priority out of being partially a music theory book approachable enough for any novice.
J Dilla was essentially a contemporary to DJ Screw, though operating out of completely different universe in Detroit. The two beatmakers possibly barely knew of each other. Charnas explains what Dilla did with his drum machine to create what he calls “Dilla Time” a rhythmic time signature that is off kilter in a specific way that is technically not supposed to work but has produced some of most timeless songs of the past 30 years. You could argue it’s irreplicable, but it has been massively influential in how rhythm has been considered since J Dilla started making beats.
What J Dilla did was not overtly political, except it was. He was essentially making music that went against Western orthodox concepts of what music is. Before J Dilla, you could not teach or articulate what J Dilla did. You barely can now. There has to be a standard that makes sense to measure things against. To deviate from that is not supposed to sound good. For as many people as you see wearing J Dilla’s face on t-shirts, you will hear people discredit what he did. They won’t mention his name, because they will never bother to learn his name. There’s an intensity to knowing that something will make people feel good, but that thing is too different to be OK. That’s the definition of radical.
J Dilla was 32 when he died.
Individual problems and collective pains all take a push. You don’t really want to think about the fact that the push never ends. That’s unpleasant. It’s also unnecessary because nothing ever really ends. The things that fuel any given person to keep pushing never end. A Dilla beat feels alive because it feels like a loop that is breaking free. The same thing is coming that you already heard, but it didn’t follow the rules, so it feels unpredictable. Your mind and your body don’t trust what comes next and you’re free to live in that anticipation.
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The Westerlies Should Have Won A Grammy
Our good friends The Westerlies were nominated for a Grammy on Sunday (hurray). They did not win (boo). We shun the Academy for this, but we encourage you to listen to them. I can’t recommend them enough. Listen while you work and your vibes will be top notch.
‘Til next time buckaroos.