Info
Performance artist, songwriter, classically trained harpist, circus sideshow veteran, and transgender street legend Baby Dee was born in 1953 in Cleveland, OH. She spent ten years as music director and organist for a Catholic church in the Bronx before joining the circus as the bilateral hermaphrodite at Coney Island. This landed her a gig as the bandleader for performance art group the Bindlestiff Family Circus and a tour with the Kamikaze Freak Show in Europe. After moving back to New York City, she became a fixture in lower Manhattan with a street act on a high-rise tricycle with a concert harp. She recorded her first record, Little Window, on the Durtro label in 2000, a four-track EP in 2001, and her second full-length, the double-disc Love's Small Song, in 2002. Dee returned to Ohio during the latter record's recording, taking vows as a novitiate of the Little Sisters of Crabby Doom (a Cleveland-based order dedicated to the care of smelly old men), vows that she has since forsaken. ~ James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide
Producer/emcee Jay Dee dies
Widely regarded as one of the most skilled producers in the game, J Dilla's passing comes a week after the release of his latest album, Donuts.
Renowned Detroit hip-hop producer and emcee Jay Dee--also known as J Dilla--died today in a Los Angeles hospital, according to his record label, Stones Throw Records. He was 32.
Jay Dee's
Donuts was released last week
The exact cause of death has not yet been confirmed, but Dilla was believed to be suffering from a kidney-related illness for some time, dating back to 2004. Speculation has surrounded his ill health for some time and reportedly he has been hospitalized several times in the past year.
Jay Dee's passing comes just a week after the release of his latest album, Donuts, a selection of sample-driven, hip-hop instrumental tracks that he created while recuperating from the mystery ailment to which he eventually succumbed.
Dilla, born James Yancey, was a founding member of Detroit's Slum Village who went on to record several solo albums and 2003's Champion Sound with Madlib in a group called Jaylib.
But even more than his solo efforts, the beatmaker was as well-regarded as any producer in hip-hop, with some artists, like ?uestlove from The Roots and Pharrell of The Neptunes, calling him their own favorite producer and one of the greatest of all time.
J-Dilla produced tracks on an array of albums in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including Beats, Rhymes and Life from A Tribe Called Quest, Stakes is High from De la Soul, Q-Tip's Amplified, Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun, and, most recently, Common's Grammy-nominated Be in 2005.
In a 2004 interview with Urb magazine, J Dilla disclosed that he had kidney problems as a result of malnutrition.
"What happened was that the doctor told me that I'd ruptured my kidney from being too busy and being stressed out and not eating right," J Dilla told Urb. "He told me that if I'd waited another day, I might not have made it."
Just added
