An Interview With Slum Village DJ Dez Andres

Image via Dez/Instagram Show your love of the game by subscribing to Passion of the Weiss on Patreon so that we can keep churning out interviews with legendary producers, feature the best emerging rap talent in the game, and gift you the only worthwhile playlists left in this streaming hellscape. Gautham Nagesh is critic at large for POW. From the mid- ‘90s until his death in 2006, J Dilla created a body of work that changed popular music forever. With just an MPC and deep crates, the Detroit producer rapper reimagined how artists approach rhythm – simultaneously combining the steady metronome of Western percussion with the syncopated, swing feel of jazz or funk. His beats evoke a woozy, off-kilter sensation, which seemed as initially perplexing as it has become revered. This innovation and its influence are best documented by author Dan Charnas in his meticulous Dilla Time. The combination of straight time and swing time in beats crafted by Dilla for artists such as A Tribe Called Quest, Common and Pharcyde, sparked a widespread revolution in how producers approach percussion. As Charnas notes, in the decades since Dilla’s approach to rhythm has influenced everyone from D’Angelo (Voodoo) to Kendrick Lamar...