HOW Kanye West INSPIRED J Dilla’s “DIL WITHERS” BEAT TAPE

Earlier this month I got the chance to sit down with Harveypizza for CPPR, 2 years after our first interview in 2024! We talked in length about my two north stars, Dilla & YE… and this ended up being my favorite story from the convo! I decided to make a quick edit to go along with the story, with some extra audio/video clips for context. THE STORY: Back in 2004, when Kanye’s production sound was really taking off — the pitched-up soul chops and all that — Dilla made an entire beat tape in response: DILL WITHERS Dilla was inspired to take on the project after comments made by DJ Scrap Dirty on set of Slum Village’s “Selfish” music video, where he questioned why Dilla was letting Kanye come around and produce for his group, and told him that Kanye was “KILLING THE SOUL SHIT” Let’s just say, Dilla took that personally, but instead of saying anything… he went and made an ENTIRE BEAT TAPE flipping nothing but SOUL SAMPLES. Dilla pushed the sound WAY further than Ye, in a way only he could, and would of course continue to develop this sound on Donuts 🍩 Shout out Young RJ, T3, Dan Charnas, and Questlove for helping document this story! Shoutout Tracklib & Narokx for the sample breakdowns 🫡 And shoutout to Padybu for creating the Dil Withers cover art featured throughout and in the thumbail! You can listen to my full interview with CPPR over on Spotify, where I tell my stories like this! And you can expect this story to be covered in greater detail during my upcoming docuseries on Dilla 👀