A few weeks back, a CD arrived on our desk entitled You Know What Love Is: Tribute to J-Dilla. It's a mix album put together by the London based DJ/promoter Spin Doctor. Upon starting to review the album, I started to do my usual exhaustive research (Step 1: visit Wikipedia. Step 2: write article), and was pretty much blown away to discover that it was almost three years to the day since the great man's sad passing. To most fans of decent hip hop, Dilla's passing on February 10th 2006 represented something of a 'will always remember where you were when you found out' moment. You know, like the other week when that pig faced racist one from Big Brother died. Me, I was…well, I was sat in front of this lap top, in a room not too far from here. Such memories. Seriously, the man's beats had soundtracked a large portion of my last five or six years, and the news that he'd succumbed to the myriad health problems which had dogged him for the last few years was a shock. I therefore thought that, as well as review Spin Doctor's marvellous mix, I'd do a small introduction/tribute to the man himself; Mr James Yancey.

Dilla was born and raised in Detroit by a mother who is an ex opera singer, and an ex Jazz bass player father. Without wishing for this to become an E! worthy piece of cod psychology, it's difficult not to notice those influences writ large in some of their son's later work. It's there in the slightly on edge female vocal of 'Lightworks', or the smooth, modern soul of 'Love'. There's a lot more going on than that though. For while Premier and Pete Rock (two huge production influences on Dilla, naturally) have trademark sounds that can be recognised a mile off, Dilla constantly reinvented himself. I usually try and be wary of empty hyperbole, but fuck it…Dilla genuinely was the most successfully varied hip hop producer there's ever been. From his early, jazz tinged work with A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde and his own Slum Village, through the casually aggressive 'Welcome 2 Detroit' from his debut solo album, the twisted soul of Jaylib (his superb collaboration with Madlib) and onto the short, snappy, largely instrumental Donuts, there are constant reinventions to be found. Sure, there are themes that remain the same, but the man was genuinely unique. We asked Spin Doctor himself to explain why Dilla was such an influence:

"He was the master of flipping something like a James Brown break you may have heard used 100 times before but doing something completely different with it so that it breathed new life into it and made it completely his own. His ear was phenomenal in hearing and understanding music in such a way that the majority of his beats only he could have made. Little things he did like considering that every time a drummer hits a drum or cymbal the sound produced was ever so slightly different, and therefore using slightly different snare or hi-hat sounds from the same kit or song while programming his beats in order to give the track a more live, organic sound set him apart. His influence of subsequent producers is clear to see but although he has been often imitated he has never been matched."

As you can tell, there's a whole lot of reverence going on, which explains the respectful way that You Know What Love Is is both compiled and mixed. Though Spin Doctor is an accomplished DJ, here he largely reins himself in; the mixing is slick but never showy, preferring to let the songs speak for themselves. And what songs they are. As well as all those already mentioned, we get a selection of tracks that Dilla sampled (the Rene Cosy track 'Scrabble' was used by Dilla for 'Fuck the Police', and he must have used Minnie Rippeton's slinky 'Inside My Love' about 63 times!), some brilliant production for other people (the dark piano led 'Stakes is High' by De La Soul being a particular favourite) and some of his best solo stuff (it was great to revisit 'Pause' for the first time in ages). Oh, and the odd quirky career decision, like the remix of Janet Jackson's 'Got Till It's Gone', which makes both Janet and Joni Mitchell sound like they were locked in a suitcase underwater to record the vocals. All in all, as an introduction to a truly great musician, it's flawless. Even more perfect, all profits from You Know What Love Is will be donated to the Yancey Family and Lupus UK (one of the illnesses that he suffered from).

It's at this point in articles like this where you need to think of something really touching, flowery and inspirational. The thing is though, I couldn't possibly come up with something better than Peter Ardarkwah, co-founder of Barely Breaking Even, the UK label that put out Welcome 2 Detroit. When we asked him for some quotes, he described Dilla as being "a phenomenal talent. Quirky but endearing. He played bass and drums and made dope beats." Quite.