Rediscovered: J Dilla’s ‘Welcome 2 Detroit’

The album contains a stunning array of different genres: straight-ahead (by Dilla standards) hip-hop; techno; bossa nova; R&B; funk; African music — it’s all there. Why is this particular project so varied, in a way the producer would never attempt again?

In large part, it’s because of the changing nature of the album. Welcome 2 Detroit has its genesis in a meeting in Europe between Dilla, then newly freed from his production collective The Ummah, and Peter Adarkwah, head of the small record label BBE (an acronym for “Barely Breaking Even”). BBE was at that point primarily putting out compilations, projects where they would license already-existing music, selected by a celebrity DJ. That was what Adarkwah originally wanted from Dilla, says Dilla Time author Charnas.

“Peter wants Jay Dee to do kind of the same thing that Kenny Dope did for him, a DJ-curated album,” he explains. “From that initial discussion, it became quite different.”

Adarkwah had never released an album of original music before, but that was what the project morphed into. The label head visited Dilla in Detroit, and the two discovered they had common musical tastes. In particular, there was a song by the African-inspired (though actually American) group Oneness of Juju that Adarkwah played for Dilla that the latter loved, as well as jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd’s 1974 track “Think Twice.”

In fact, it was that trip that cemented Welcome 2 Detroit’s shape. It had already by that point changed conception from a compilation to a collection of original beats. But the pair hanging out and trading songs in the Motor City changed everything.

“The upshot of it was, when Peter Adarkwah comes to Detroit, it’s going to be an instrumental record of beats,” Charnas says. “But by the end of the trip, they both realize that James can actually create a solo album, with him singing or rapping or programming beats or playing instruments.”

Adarkwah’s BBE was still a small company, and could only promise a $75,000 advance. But in return, Dilla was given license to do whatever he wanted. What he wanted, it turned out, was in large part to make the kind of tracks he and the BBE founder had been listening to during their time together — both Oneness of Juju’s “African Rhythms” and “Think Twice” are covered on the project.

Drummer and producer Karriem Riggins, a Detroiter as well, first befriended Dilla when Common, who Riggins was playing with at the time, came to the city to see if Dilla had beats for his 1997 album, One Day It’ll All Make Sense. A few years later, not long before Welcome 2 Detroit, Riggins ended up getting a call to play on a song by Dilla’s group Slum Village, “2U 4U.”

“I came in and I played it and nailed it,” Riggins remembers. “He had ideas of wanting to do more music with live drums. So that time span from [Slum Village’s Fantastic Vol. 2] to Welcome 2 Detroit, wheels were turning on how he could incorporate me on other things.

“Then he met Peter Adarkwah, and I think Peter’s direction was that he wanted Dilla to do live-oriented music and covers. It was supposed to be a covers album, from what I was told.”

So we have a wide-open blueprint and a virtuosic drummer, soon to be joined by singer/songwriter Dwele. For the rap tracks, a mix of Dilla’s Detroit pals came on board — Phat Kat, Elzhi, Frank’n’Dank — alongside the beatmaker himself.

“He decided that he was going to be generous with his Detroit friends and put them on,” Charnas explains. “He had a whole stable of folks for years who wanted to get on Jay Dee beat, and so here’s the chance.”

The sessions for the record involved a lot of live instrumentation, much of it played by Dilla.

“He was stacking those songs the way Stevie Wonder recorded,” Riggins says. “He would lay the drums, when he played on “Think Twice,” that’s track for track. He did the kick first, and then he did the hi-hat, and then he did the cymbal swells and all of that, the different nuances. Then he did the keys. Then he called Dwele to come in to do the horns. And then he sang it. It was a process of a few sessions to create certain songs.”

Riggins played drums on several tracks, and even got one of his beats on there too (“The Clapper”) — no small feat when one of the all-time greatest beatmakers has his name on the cover.

“That was the first beat that I ever placed — something that I created from scratch on a drum machine inspired by my favorite producer,” he says. “And he purchases the beat and gives me a shot at being a producer. That was the highest honor.”

Welcome 2 Detroit is unique in Dilla’s output. Charnas, who knows the producer’s discography as well as anyone, agrees that he never made a single album as diverse ever again.

“I think he tried with The Shining, which was the second BBE album,” the author says. “But he was very sick at the time, and the sessions were few and far between, and Karriem had to finish that album on his own.

“So that’s why Welcome 2 Detroit is really, really special. I think his plans for Pay Jay, what became The Diary in later years, were straight hip-hop, with him rhyming. I think it is absolutely the most diverse offering from Jay Dee. No question about it.”

And yet, somehow, the multi-genre project feels cohesive. To Riggins, who recently released a tribute track to Dilla, it’s because that was just who he was.

“My first time going to his basement, I was pulling out records and discovering things that I had never discovered about people that I grew up listening to,” he recalls, with wonder still in his voice. “Elvin Jones is one of my favorite drummers, and I pull out a record that I never heard of Elvin’s. That was crazy.

“I learned about Mutiny through him, and a lot of prog rock stuff. He was heavy on prog rock, heavy on jazz and Afrobeat, all of those things.

“I feel like you are what you listen to, just like you are what you eat. He just bled everything that was in him on that record.”

Charnas sees it as a high point in the producer’s career.

“It’s an act of generosity. It really is,” he says. “It’s a miracle album. And it’s a great time capsule of Dilla at his creative apex.”