J Dilla

Culled from unreleased beats from J. Dilla's old floppy disks, beat vaults and early hospital stays, Jay Stay Paid does little to dim the posthumous acclaim Dilla has accrued since his passing three years ago. Executive produced by his mother Maureen "Ma Dukes" Yancey and curated by J. Dilla's production idol Pete Rock, Jay Stay Paid is formatted as fictional radio station KJAY playing "the hottest hour in hip-hop." Largely an instrumental affair, Jay Stay Paid does however have a good balance of logical contributors (brother Illa J and protégé Frank Ditty), like-minded new jacks (Blu and Diz Gibran) and musical peers (Black Thought, DOOM) who largely use Dilla's beats as vehicles to demonstrate their mic prowess. But the inescapable focus is of course on Dilla, even when some of the beats on this 58-minute outing appear to be, understandably so, nothing more than an unfinished instrumental shards. The shrewd short attention span style sequencing of the album admirably makes this into Jay Stay Paid's strength. Consequently when Dilla manipulates warm guitar licks into anxiety-ridden blips on "Laser Gunne Funke," or when the sumptuous "Milk Money" incorporates a ghostly ambience, you don't want the beats to end. With his sonic legacy continuing to increase, there's no real danger of that happening anytime soon.