|
 |
Browse Bands by Name
|
|
Or enter a band name below to search:
|
 Bands Main
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In January 2002, Jay returned from a European tour feeling as if he had a horrible flu and went straight to his mother's house. "That meant that he really didn't feel good, because he liked to be alone, he liked to work every moment possible," Maureen said.
That night, she took him to the hospital, where doctors found his blood platelet level was 8 — it should have been 150. "They were convinced he was bleeding somewhere, they didn't know what was going on," she said.
A specialist was called in who diagnosed Jay with a rare blood disease called TTP, or thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura.
"We wanted to know why and how, and we stayed there a good month in the hospital," Jay's mother recalled. "They just told us that he was one out of so many million unlucky people and they didn't have a cure, but they did have certain doctors who would try to treat him, and that was the best we could expect."
Jay began taking steroids, which brought him back on track for a while. A year later, he moved to Los Angeles to continue producing and working on various albums, including several for Stones Throw, most notably Champion Sound, his 2003 collaboration with California rapper/producer Madlib under the name Jaylib.
"Although he already had a lot of success with all the bigger-named artists he was working with, he chose to work with us because climbing the ladder of success wasn't as important to him as being creative," Peanut Butter Wolf said.
Jay was surprisingly prolific even though his health continued to diminish. His muscles constantly ached, the dialysis left his body temperature ice-cold, and his kidneys often shut down, resulting in extended hospital stays.
"He wasn't scared, though," remembered Maureen, who moved out to care for him in 2004. "He was a real soldier when it came to that. I would've been petrified. He was annoyed because it was like he never had the flu before or had been sick in his life, and then you're faced with something that you can't treat."
In 2005, doctors discovered what they believed to be lupus, a disease that essentially causes the body to destroy itself. Still, Jay continued working in the studio he built in his Los Angeles home, which he shared with rapper Common.
"A lot of times his stomach wouldn't allow him to eat, but he still would work until he fell asleep with his head on the turntable," Maureen said. "I would try to wake him, 'Let's go back and get some rest,' or whatever, and he was like, 'No, no, no, I'll be all right.' He had something to finish."
When he was hospitalized, Jay had Bobo haul his equipment up to his room where he continued to work, introducing his doctors to hip-hop. Few of his friends had any idea he was sick until last fall, when Jay mustered the strength to embark on European solo tour and performed in a wheelchair.
"We had talked about us getting back together and doing another [Slum Village] album and he wanted Baatin to be a part of it and I was like, 'That's cool,' " T3 said. "I didn't realize how really, really sick he was until I saw the pictures of him touring and then I was like, 'Damn.' "
Jay was out of the hospital in February of this year, and on the 7th he got to spend his first birthday at home in four years. Still, he was in intense pain and was unable to spend much time with his visitors, including Common and actress Taraji Henson, and Wolf and Madlib, who brought him a cake in the shape of a donut in honor of Jay's Donuts album, which was released that day.
Three days later, Bobo arrived at Jay's house to take him and Maureen to the hospital. Jay was lying on the couch, mumbling in his sleep. When he stopped, Bobo and Maureen realized he had passed away. He was just 32.
"I felt him take his last breath," Bobo said. "Thinking back, I think the mumbling was him having a conversation with God. He wanted to stay, but when God calls you to come home, it's pretty much time."
A few days later, on Valentine's Day, Jay was buried in Los Angeles in a ceremony attended by nearly every artist he'd ever worked with, and many more, from ?uestlove and D'Angelo to — for reasons not entirely clear at press time — members of New Kids on the Block.
"To see the broad spectrum of people that came out to the service, it just showed how important music is in bringing people together like that," Dilated Peoples' Raaka commented a few days after.
At the funeral, Maureen announced plans to turn Jay's Los Angeles studio into a public workspace, "kind of like a memorial where artists will be able to come work right there and use his equipment with his blessing," she said later.
There's also talk of a tribute concert to help Maureen pay Jay's hospital bills, but such logistics have been far from the minds of his friends, who are still mourning.
"We definitely lost somebody who really cared about the music and who tried to make something really beautiful," Elzhi said. "He had something that couldn't be duplicated."
"He was like that bridge between the underground and the mainstream, but because he was so humble, he's esoteric [to all but] core hip-hop heads," added Eddie of BBE Records, who hopes to up Dilla's profile with the July 11 release of The Shining, the solo album Jay nearly completed before his death. "He had it all, and now is the time to get the word out."
Jay is survived by two daughters, but he never married.
"He just stuck to what he knew best — music — and that kept him from having a personal side," Bobo said.
By recording up until his final hours, however, Jay was able to have everything he ever wanted.
"It was his life blood," Maureen said. "People have different interests — you know, I like to bowl, dance, but he was totally about the music, 100 percent. It was his great love."
|
|
|
|
Photo: Stones Throw Records
|
|
|
|
