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Last Sunday, Detroit and the hip hop world lost one of the greatest producers in modern music. James Yancey, aka J Dilla aka Jay Dee passed away from a lengthy battle with Lupus. His latest record "Donuts," just came out days before his death, and most of it was recorded from his hospital room in LA.

You're probably wondering 'who is this?' Why have I not heard of him? Even if you haven't heard of him, I guarantee you've heard him. Whether it's on a track from A Tribe Called Quest, or The Roots, or that one Mariah Carey song that has Ol' Dirty Bastard on it, you've most likely heard something where Jay Dee provided the beats.

My first exposure to his work came to me in 1994 when I was on college radio. My early hip hop mentor, fellow college radio cohort Doug Wheeler first played some stuff for me where Jay Dee did the remix or provided the beats. I was hooked right away by the simple snaps of the snares and the seemingly basic yet totally complex drum loops. The man was a genius!

Via the interweb, I started seeing things early this week about Yancey. The OkayPlayer site has some really touching words concerning his legacy. Black Thought of The Roots posted an excellent memorial on the site's message boards, and the main page of the site has plenty to read as well.

As I mentioned in the previous post, ?uestlove of the Roots seems to be an avid writer on the web. Here you can read his moving experience of Yancey's funeral.

For any of you who are wondering what all Jay Dee did that you may know of, here is a list from ?uestlove's MySpace blog detailing the 'songs that built my career', i.e. his favorite Jay Dee tracks.

What makes this so difficult for so many people is that he was only 32. Yeah, when he was 20, he was making beats for A Tribe Called Quest! It wasn't until after that when he started releasing stuff with Slum Village (criminally underrated and overlooked Detroit hip hop act). He left Slum as a full-time member a couple years ago when his illness started getting bad, but he still appeared as a guest on the albums.

RIP Jay Dee