Dilla Time

5. In a text message with Aaron Halfacre, Justin Timberlake says that he never knew of the second overture to J Dilla by Ron Fair on *NSYNC’s behalf. “It never got to any of us at least,” he wrote.

6. There are two stories about this encounter: The first, from Frank, is that James was meeting with Proof there to squash a beef related to one of Phat Kat’s lyrics on Welcome 2 Detroit, thought to be a diss of Eminem. The second, from Denaun Porter and Mark Hicks, is that James didn’t come into the studio, but rather spent a day shopping with one of Dre’s producers, Mel-Man, and the two got to talking about the expenses involved in working with samples.

7. Composing music made from sampled bits and pieces of others’ songs has, since its inception, been completely unprotected by law, in contrast to the way that remaking entire songs written by others enjoys complete protection. For example, when James replayed Donald Byrd’s “Think Twice” for Welcome 2 Detroit without sampling the audio, his cover version could be done without the performers’ or the songwriters’ permission because U.S. copyright law, to balance creativity and commerce, provides something called a “compulsory license” for songs. As long as James pays the song’s publisher, Alruby Music, the legal rate, he can legally perform the song on his own recording. But if James had wanted to sample only a few seconds of Donald Byrd’s recording of “Think Twice” for a new song, the law offered no compulsory process for licensing a portion of a song, nor any process whatsoever for licensing a portion of a recorded performance of that song. So if James sought permission for that use, the two owners of “Think Twice”—the song and the recording of it—could potentially set any price they wanted, or even deny James’s use altogether. The record labels that released James’s music throughout his career had to engage in a lengthy sample clearance process, even for the tiniest of samples. James was particularly bitter that his use of an uncleared sliver of a classic breakbeat, “UFO” by the group ESG, in the song “Let’s Ride,” from Q-Tip’s Amplified, led to a six-figure lawsuit.

8. There is another conversation that Joylette recalls from this time, again pivotal for Joy, but one that Maureen Yancey says never happened. Joy says that, while moving into the Clinton Township house, Maureen took exception to Joy handling some of the arrangements: “I feel like once he marries you, I’m going to be pushed aside,” to which Joy says she replied, “You can never be pushed aside. I can’t give him what you give him and you can’t give him what I give him.”

9. Joylette Hunter has no idea what this reference means: “I didn’t have any interview scheduled and I would never leave the baby at home without calling Clarice,” Maureen’s sister, who sometimes came to watch the baby.

10. On the forthcoming Jaylib album, James would take an oblique shot at his friend: “It’s barefoot bullyshit, so you don’t need them house shoes.” Also featured on the song was Guilty Simpson who, indebted to James and Shoes both, alerted the DJ to the line before the album’s release.

11. “The 788” and “J-88” were two related aliases for Slum Village. The former represented the days of each of the three members’ birthdays; and the latter replaced James’s birthday, February 7, with his first initial.

11. Warp Time

1. He would later become a national TV host on the program Desus & Mero.

12. J Dilla

1. Joylette insists that Maureen told her, “He’s in the hospital. He was in a coma but it’s all good now.” Maureen rejects this account, stating that James was not in a coma or semi-comatose state during his stay at Bon Secours.

2. James actually produced one track for this series, “Certified,” featuring Bilal, released in 2000.

3. This story, told to House Shoes and Young R. J. and relayed to this reporter in differing ways, has not been confirmed by Raphael Saadiq after several queries, and James may have been exaggerating or boasting, as he sometimes did. For his part, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who has no knowledge of any such exchange, says he thought the remix was brilliant.

4. Q-Tip and A&R executive Drew Dixon remained with Arista after Clive Davis left in late 1999, hoping for more aggressive promotion with the new head of Arista, L.A. Reid, who had called Kamaal the Abstract “genius” in a meeting with executives, according to Dixon. But Reid soon cooled to Q-Tip’s album, and to other projects and prospective signings of Dixon’s—like Kanye West and John Legend—an ostracism that Dixon attributes to her refusal to reciprocate Reid’s sexual advances, which she details in the 2020 HBO documentary On the Record. In 2017, Reid exited his post atop Sony Music after the company investigated allegations of sexual harassment.