Music – 2 days ago

Photo credit: screengrab, Stem Player

J Dilla fans can score some rare and previously-released music from the late producer thanks to the Stem Player. For a monthly subscription of $1.94, listeners can access 20 different beats from the Detroit icon, including tracks featured on Dilla’s Vol. 1 and 2 instrumental albums released in the early 2000s. Some of those tracks — “Busta,” “Hambro,” Kamaal,” “Earl” and many others — can be previewed here. For $30 more, Stem Player enthusiasts can purchase a cosmic spectrum green skin on Dilla’s Stem Player page.

The Stem Player, which came into popularity around the release of Kanye West’s 2022 album, Donda 2, is a music streaming device and audio remixing tool that some artists have been exclusively loading their music to. Users can add tracks by uploading audio files to the device via an online web application.

This news comes the same week that FX will premiere its The Legacy of J Dilla documentary, which debuts on April 7 at 10 PM ET (also available to stream on Hulu the following day). Presented as “an intimate portrait” by the New York Times, the documentary explores the depth of Dilla’s life, with additional insight from his hip-hop collaborators. The documentary will also chronicle Dilla’s health struggles that led to his untimely passing in 2006.

“I’m a Detroiter, and I’m a fighter,” his mother Maureen Yancey, told TV Insider. “I will stay in there, and I will fight. I won’t let anybody put my son down, what I do for him down, because I’m here to lift up his music, his legacy.”

Watch the trailer below.