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What if J Dilla Produced The Blueprint? Much like the plotlines behind the classic Marvel Comics series it draws inspiration from, any attempt to answer that question requires as much of an examination of the bit players in the story as it does the main characters.
Without the mainstream exposure that the album provided for the Kanye West-produced Izzo, it's hard to imagine 'Ye's career following the same trajectory from Madd Rapper protege to one of the most sought after producers of the decade. Take West off of The Blueprint, and it's unlikely he would have ever formed the relationship with, or gained enough leverage over, Jay-Z to talk his way into a solo deal with Roc-A-Fella, reluctant as Dame and Jay were to sign Kanye even after having worked with him. Further, had Jay been working with Dilla on the album, he certainly wouldn't have felt the need to jack the Izzo beat from Cam'ron and we could have avoided the entire Dipset/Jay-Z beef (though there is a downside to that, as "open toe chancletas" may never have entered into the hip hop vernacular).
Were Dilla the producer behind Takeover, would the diss track have evoked the same response among fans? Certainly the lyrical shots fired at Nas and Mobb Deep were enough to get the crowds at Summer Jam '01 fired up, but West's sampling of The Doors' Five To One turned the song into a crossover hit. Replace West's production with an underground beat, and it's unlikely the song would have stayed in Hot 97's rotation as long as it did, reducing the motivation for Nas to fire back with the equally classic Ether.
Had Jay-Z opted not to use Eminem's beat for Renegades, easily the pinnacle of Marshall's career as a producer, perhaps Em would have given up his attempts to become the second coming of Dr. Dre. Without the distraction of putting out several albums worth of mediocre beats, would Eminem instead have spent more time working on his lyrics, delaying his fall from grace?
What about the main characters of this story, Jay-Z and Jay Dee? Picking Dilla as the producer for his album would undoubtedly have earned Jay back the credibility among hard core hip hop fans that he lost after the crossover attempt of In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, but it would have also run the risk of depriving him of a lot of the radio friendly production that led to the album going double platinum. Without those big sales numbers, would Jay have had the capital to buy Dame out of his Roc-A-Fella partnership, a move that paved the way for Jay to (briefly) become the head of Def Jam? (If we follow down that path far enough, we might question whether Rihanna would ever have been discovered, drastically altering the current state of Chris Brown's life.)
Yet back in 2001, merely having Jay-Z's name on the album cover was about as close as you could get to a guarantee of platinum sales. As great a producer as he was, that's something that Dilla never really had an opportunity to experience. Pure speculation, but the improved financial situation that mainstream success would have provided for Dilla might have allowed him to pursue better treatment for TTP, the blood disorder that eventually caused his untimely passing. Of course, hip hop fans being as fickle as they are, the more mainstream success Dilla found, the more unlikely it would have been for him to become the cult hero among underground heads that he is today.
Putting my idle speculation aside, UK producer Jimmy Green has provided a rather interesting answer to the question in mp3 form. Apparently inspired by the internet rumors that ?uestlove at one point provided Jay-Z a tape full of Dilla beats during the recording process for The Black Album (one version of the story posits that Jay passed on the beats after he was unable to match the tempo of Dilla's production, though I find it hard to believe that he was unable to adapt his flow considering the way he used to rap back in the day), Green recently put out the mixtape What If Dilla Produced The Blueprint?, featuring Jay-Z's Blueprint acapellas with various beats from Dilla's career. The result is an album that doesn't deliver quite as many potential Billboard singles as the original, but manages to be almost as enjoyable a listening experience. After giving the mixtape a few listens, I can't help but wish we all had the chance to find out what really would have happened if Jay-Z and Dilla had a chance to work together.
Jay-Z and J Dilla - Takeover
Jay-Z and J Dilla - All I Need
Link to download What If Dilla Produced the Blueprint? (rapidshare link)
It should also be noted that Jimmy Green wasn't the first to combine Dilla and Jay-Z onto one track. One of my favorite songs of all time is the DJ Soul remix of Jay-Z's Song Cry with Dilla's Don't Cry. You can find a link to it on this post I did for Souled On....
07/07/2009 10:30:01 PM posted by Fresh