Kingof beats1
It wasn't long ago that we were blessed with a fresh, unreleased J Dilla cut, and now it seems we've got another bit of glazed goodness to nibble on. "Filth" is a 98 second neck-snapper comprised of a funky 1-bar drum break and more of those classic James Brown vocal jabs. It's a minute-and-a-half-long blast of lowdown gritty hip-hop and features Dilla's own "rap like Saran" percussive flow. The verse is punctured in places by silence from Jay Dee and the track ends with the him confessing "Rough draft, a first take, Imma fill in them lines, come back. Peace." It's mighty nice to hear the GOAT in the middle of his process, as shaky as he is certain, laying down all the tough bars he can but still coming up a few short. All we can do now is wonder what the finished "Filth" would have been had he lived a little longer.
Because we could never own enough Dilla, we're very pleased by the news that the track will be included in The King of Beats: Ma Dukes Yancey Collector’s Edition, a massive compendium that will ship with four 10" records that draw material from the "Batches" era of Jay Dee's career, a booklet of interviews with his peers and even more lost-until-now unreleased material on both cassette and floppy disc. The entire package will arrive in a stylish box reminiscent of the SP-1200 Em-u drum machine--the same one that gave Dilla his first taste of beatmaking.
"Filth" is still dynamite as-is, though, with the JB shouts getting doubled-over and morphed into an angry human car horn. The drums are pretty straightforward by Dilla standards and take us back to that Vibrettes "Humpty Dump" break that he flipped with great success on Q-Tip's "Let's Ride." Could it be the same sample, or is there a more likely drum chop out there in the Dillaverse? Your hip-hop geek guesses are very much welcomed in the comment section, but first be sure to kick back and enjoy "Filth" in its own dirty dominance and count on us to bring you all the details on The King of Beats. Listen to the unreleased J Dilla track below.
