Jay Dilla the beat killa died today. He was 32.

Cannot overstate this man's musical influence on the sound of hip-hop today, and on my personal music listening and production. Stones Throw has the complete discog, and it's huge. There are just not more than a few producers in the same league- Pete Rock, Premier, Prince Paul, RZA... Anyone else?

The man broke into my consciousness in 96 doing the production on The Pharcyde's Runnin, De La Soul's The Stakes is High, and the bulk of A Tribe Called Quest's Beats Rhymes and Life. Am I missing any, or is that is literally all the best hiphop albums from 1996 that weren't The Roots or DJ Shadow?

Then over the next ten years just consistently dropped stunningly good beats all the time. Highlites for me: Runnin, Stakes, ATCQ's The Jam and Start It Up, The Roots' Dynamite, Q-Tip Breathe And Stop and Ride, all of Welcome 2 Detroit, Four Tet's As Serious As Your Life remix, and finally Questlove's freaking-out-excited rants about JD circa 1999. There's more, I know there's more, but that's all I got for now.

I commemorate him with this appropo-seeming clip of Clyde Stubblefield drumming with James Brown in 1968. Keep the funk alive?