Today is the late, great James Yancey's birthday, and since Stones Throw re-released Donuts as a 45 box set earlier this winter, it's been hard to feel like there's any other beat music more worth listening to. It's a moving feeling, more than a frustrating one, and doubly poignant for the fact that Donuts came out the week of J Dilla's death. Hip-hop producer and jazz drummer Karriem Riggins understood the inner machinery of that instrumental masterwork so well that he completed Dilla's The Shining posthumously, the album that was meant to be Donuts' follow-up. In this Yrs Truly live session and interview, Riggins plays an instrumental number he wrote called "J Dilla The Greatest," which appears on his recent Stones Throw debut, Alone Together, and draws inspiration from his collaborator's repetitious sampling style.
