I was 15 years old when Tupac Shakur succumbed to bullet wounds, and I remember looking at MTV thinking "damn, that's pretty messed up." But I didn't take it to bed with me. When Biggie went six months later, I was caught by surprise and my mouth hit the floor, but I went on to school that morning with the same insouciance I woke up with.



I caught wind of Jay Dilla's Feb. 10 death close to the end of my work shift the Friday he died, My mans Buff of Athletic Mic League posted a bulletin on Myspace in memoriam. It took a second to register; mainly because I had purchased his new album Donuts just three days prior, and I was still on this whole "Dilla's gonna change the game" high. When it finally settled in, I was floored. Done. A mild depression marked me for the remainder of the evening...



I spent the entire week before Dilla's death trying to convince people to listen to Donuts, which happens to be the most fluid, consistent beat tape I've ever heard. But I had two very prominent obstacles working against me: It's only a beat tape, and no one outside of a very esoteric circle of hip-hop fans and producers were familiar with or cared enough about the artist to make a conscious effort.



So will this change now in light of his passing? Probably not. It's well-known that in the vein of artistry, when one dies before their time, one's work becomes increasingly more appreciated (skyrocketing album sales in the case of musicians) than when the artist is here on earth. Hell, even I was guilty of running out and finally copping Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. in late September of 1996. But even if I were to ask a random sampling of Detroiters that caught wind of Dilla death, I'd bet two bits to a bottle of piss that most wouldn't even know that he dropped an album three days before he went...



Virtually all of the rappers we tend to put in the pantheon died arguably at the top of their games. Throw in a couple bullet casings into the mix and we're talking a romantically tragic death. Pac and Big each put in less than five years proving their worth, and I have no doubt in my mind that if either rapper were still living, both would have had a fall from grace that every single rapper is fated to experience. There is minimal longevity in the rhyme game But Dilla? Dude has been in the game for more than a decade laying down classic cuts. Thing is, he was the man in the 1990's, and after leaving Slum Village at the turn of the century, he started to hit his stride with increasingly musical, loop-based beats.



We all love Pharcyde's "Runnin'" right? Who engineered that classic beat? We love Common to death, but who produced the best tracks on his last three albums? Who helped usher in De La Soul's triumphant return? Who sculpted some of the finest beats of Busta Rhymes' career? The quietest third of the Ummah production team kept under the surface his entire career, but ask the Pharrells and the Kanyes and the 9th Wonders about Dilla and they will all but admit that he fathered their production styles.



So what do we get in the wake of his death? A little blurb of a story on the Associated Press. Quick article on MTV News; maybe a mention or two in a few entertainment periodicals and done. Sh!t, I had to call The Detroit News the evening of his death to inform my former coworkers. I was met with cluelessness...not just of his death, but of who he was and what he accomplished. I kept thinking that if Kanye H. Christ or an artist of his pop culture stature died anytime soon, there'd be introspective on top of memoriam on top of this and that, and MTV's SuChin Pak would probably have her bony azz on the South Side of Chicago interviewing people about his "impact" on