J Dilla Tribute Bag !

This is the second bag up in my "Musician's Series" (you can check out the James Brown tribute bag I made a few months ago on this blog as well). J Dilla was my absolute favorite producer EVER. He changed the face of both hip hop and r&b, and chances are, he might be one of your favorites too, and you might not even know it. Do you like De La Soul? A Tribe Called Quest? Common? Then you like his beats. Dwele? Spacek? Platinum Pied Pipers? Yep, he did production for them too. Don't forget his classic work with Slum Village, and his collabo with the equally ridiculous Madlib (entitled "Jaylib"). And how about new cats like Wajeed, Ta'Raach, Black Milk? They all learned the beatsmith trade from Dilla. On top of all that, he was also one of the most underrated emcees around. Just go check out his discography, and see for yourself how ridiculous it is...

Dilla was taken from us far, far too soon...he was only 32 when he passed away due to a rare blood disease and lupus-related complications. Still, even through all of his time in and out of hospitals and being stuck in bed with barely enough energy to get up and walk around, he never stopped working. His friends brought him records at the hospital so he could sample and chop beats up on his Akai MPC. You can basically hear his influence in everything good that's been coming out in the past few years. There will never be another....

For this bag, since I never had any intention of it being used by anybody but myself, I made it an oversized Deluxe - the size I used when I was working as a messenger; I've never gotten used to anything else - and chose a base color of green. I decided to go with a simpler rendition of an old pic i found, and put an image of his favorite tool - the MPC - in the background.

This bag will actually be a part of the opening show for Undr Crwn (located right across the street from R.E.Load!), which is running from May 5th through June 2nd. So you can peep it there, until it finds permanent resting place on my left shoulder.

"Turn it up!"