Stones Throw J Dilla (Jay Dee) – Donuts (Smile Cover), 2xLP Vinyl Music

Repress with the “Smile” album cover (versus the older “Drawing” cover”)

Donuts began simply enough as an idea to turn a particularly good demo beat tape into a full-length release, and has since became a classic hip-hop album, one of the defining works of the artist’s life.  

Completed during a year in which J Dilla spent mostly in a hospital bed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Donuts would gain particular poignancy when, only three days after it’s release, February 10, 2006, the artist passed away, losing his battle with a rare blood disease.

Announced in Fall 2005, the concept of a “rap album without rappers” struck some as minor novelty, but Donuts would prove to transcend the rigid definitions of what a hip-hop album could be.  It plays part like a DJ mix, part like a hip-hop beat maker at work, its songs starting and stopping unexpectedly, like someone turning the dial on an imaginary radio station. But it’s an unmistakably modern album, and one which perfectly encapsulated the artist’s reputation among his peers and fans as a top-rated architect of soulful hip-hop.

 

Track Listing:

 

A1. Donuts (Outro)
A2. Workinonit 
A3. Waves
A4. Light My Fire
A5. The New
A6. Stop 
A7. People
A8. The Diff’ rence
B1. Mash
B2. Time: The Donut Of The Heart
B3. Glazed
B4. Airworks
B5. Lightworks
B6. Stepson Of The Clapper
B7. The Twister (Huh, What)
C1. One Eleven
C2. Two Can Win 
C3. Don’t Cry
C4. Anti-American Graffiti
C5. Geek Down
C6. Thunder
C7. Gobstopper
D1. One For Ghost
D2. Dilla Says Go 
D3. Walkinonit
D4. The Factory
D5. U-Love 
D6. Hi.
D7. Bye.
D8. Last Donut of the Night
D9. Donuts (Intro)