I've read many life and times pieces on J. Dilla since his death in February. They tell about his quiet rise to stardom, all the big names and hip hop idols that became his friends. Then they tell about how just as he reached his prime, he became incurably ill. His death roused the hip hop world to make more noise about him than he'd ever allowed during his life. Those articles have been written over and over. I don't need nor do I want to write one of those. Still, when I started writing for iHigh the first thing I wanted to write about was Dilla.

I didn't get to know Jay Dee until last year when I picked up Champion Sounds, his collaboration with Madlib. It had an edge to it that I recognized but couldn't place. It seemed like I'd heard it everywhere and didn't realize it until that moment. I knew Jay Dee's name but I didn't know his work. I didn't know what he was about. I was one of those people who might have confused some references to him as references to Jermaine Dupri (one of the reasons behind his shift to the name J. Dilla about five years ago). But on Champion Sounds I finally heard something my ears had been yearning for, something raw and real.

The next album I picked up was Welcome 2 Detroit. I hadn't heard it though I had heard pretty much every other BBE Beat Generation album. That record knocked me out. I mean gut, jaw, one, two, floored. Dilla's music was not tidy, but it was sharp. It's got an unabashed honesty in it that is almost obscene.

From there I worked my way back. I couldn't believe I had missed this guy. I went back and listened to some of my favorite songs only now knowing who was responsible for them. Having gone Dilla crazy, listening to his songs for days on end, I finally came around to Common's “The Light.” There are a lot of good memories attached to that song, in high school I listened to Like Water For Chocolate hundreds of times, always with repeated plays of “The Light.” I almost skipped it this time, though, thinking “I know this song, what more can I get out of it?”

As it turns out, I got a dizzying shift in perspective. I heard things I'd never noticed before, the little rough patches on samples, a quiver in a voice, something just barely off beat but still on time. I was mystified. So began my obsession with Jay Dee.

It was, admittedly, a brief obsession. I wanted to go see his shows and keep track of all his singles. I looked for rare and unreleased stuff. Then I started checking for news updates. It wasn't long before I noticed snippets here and there about his illness. Something about lupus, which I knew enough about to know this was already a tragedy. But things looked hopeful. He was touring; he actually rocked shows from a wheelchair. He was lying on hospital beds making beats, the room filled with his equipment, records, and beat tapes. The stories were comic, light-hearted anecdotes and images illustrating his commitment. His love for hip hop was so much stronger than any physical debilitation, it couldn't keep him down. It was like watching Rudy. I sat at my computer reading updates and chanting “DIL-LA, DIL-LA, DIL-LA,” trying to send some positive energy his way. But it wasn't long before he was gone.

At the time I was doing a radio show on the university station, and I used the opportunity to get his music out there. I made sure to say his name after I played one of his songs. At the end of every night I gave him shout-outs and get-well-soons. On the night of his death I walked into the studio with armfuls of Dilla and found that the DJ that was on before me was doing a Dilla tribute, too. I looked at his records, he looked at my CDs, and we both sighed. Turns out I wasn't the only one who knew about the magic Jay Dee's sounds. As I took over at the controls we started talking about the man and his music. Our stories were strikingly similar: we'd both been listening to and loving his work for a long time before we found out who he was, once we did we were hooked. He'd been a fan much longer than I had been and spoke of the music much more articulately than I could manage in all my excitement at the time. I put the CD player on continuous play and let whole albums play as we sat there trying to figure out wherein lay the genius of Dilla, as we'd both immediately agreed that it was true genius that we were dealing with. We'd stop mid-sentence as something was playing that perfectly illustrated the points we were trying to make and after a couple bars we'd both break out in laughter. Looking back we should have left the mics turned on and broadcast that conversation while his songs were playing in the background. I couldn't imagine a more fitting tribute.

What we decided was that Jay Dee's genius lay in his love. The love he had for music translated directly to his work as a producer. It hardly seems revolutionary but the idea that you should listen to the whole record before sampling it was something that made Dilla stand out from other producers. And by listen I mean really listen. Dilla had a warehouse full of vinyl and he made a point of listening to it all. He left one just finished and two unfinished albums for us to listen to but, more tragically, he never had the time to finish listening to all the records he had bought and would by in the future.

The love he had for making music ran just as deep. His mother, Maureen Yancey, has started Ma Dukes Records to make sure that the hundreds of hours of unreleased beats and songs that he produced will eventually be released. The stories of him still making beats in the hospital bed are a great example of just how much he was committed to hip hop.

The love he had for friends, family, and other artists is undeniable. The outpouring of respect and affection from every imaginable source in the wake of his death was probably the most epic moment of musical unity since “We Are the World.” His love was infectious and it was requited.

It had to be the love. It had to be something abstract, untouchable and unknowable, because it will never be duplicated. That's what hip hop has to face with his death: a whole that cannot be filled. That's exactly what I felt with his death. The loss of a special presence is felt immediately, even when you had no idea it had always been there. When Pharrell told the audience of 106 and Park that his favorite producer was Jay Dee, he famously remarked that the crowd had probably never herd of him. They've probably heard of him by now. They probably own three of his albums by now.

As a listener I can feel assured that I will probably be hearing new Jay Dee music for years to come. But as a fan it is hard to be assured of anything. I remember the days after Kurt Cobain's death in '94, when I was just ten years old, watching people crying and mourning on TV. Huge crowds showed up at his home to honor him and his music. I didn't get it then, but I do now. Genius in an artist, especially a beloved artist, is a superhuman quality and the superhuman is something we can all rally around. To rise above the lowliness that sometimes comes with being human (or to appear to do so anyways) is to give hope to the rest of us who can't. Death of the extraordinary is persistence of the ordinary, and certainly worth mourning.

Jay Dee's music is amazing, but in his story it is merely an element of character. It is the basis of his genius, which is the crux of his story and it is the story that is ultimately important. I don't care if you don't like hip hop, but you can appreciate a story. In this story, Dilla's mastery in his field makes us sympathetic and his tragedy inspires us and compels us to our own great heights. Like Brian's Song, we couldn't help but mourn Brian Piccolo, not because he died but because he died before his potential was fulfilled. It is these stories that bind us as a collective. We can take Dilla as our own, as a representative human being, without ever hearing a single song of his because he represents an ideal for which we can all strive. He perished just before reaching the mountain top and now his ghost beckons us to finish what he didn't have the chance to.