Birthdays are time for celebration. It’s a time for everyone to gather around that certain loved one, rejoice, and give thanks to God for allowing that person (or yourself) one more year of something that so many people take for granted—life.

Back on February 7th of this year, James Dewitt Yancey to his family, and J Dilla to fans should’ve been celebrating his 34th born-day. But as the whole Hip-Hop community knows, he succumbed to the rare blood disease, TTP (Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura) three days after his 32nd.

Two years after his passing, the Hip-Hop world still hasn’t come to grips with loosing another great pioneer of this industry. The only positive way to think about such a tragedy is to just imagine J Dilla in the studio right now making tracks for the MC’s like Tupac, Biggie, Pimp C, Big L, Big Pun, and all the other fallen soldiers we’ve lost over the years.

The hardest part about this Sweet SixtEEn was just being able to represent one piece of Jay’s work, which is utterly impossible. But I chose to go with “Make ‘em NV” off his Ruff Draft CD (released posthumously). Black Thought of The Roots told it best when he said that Dilla was by far the best producer on the mic. And Kanye West summed it up when he said that no one on this planet could touch Dilla’s drums. R.I.P. Jay Dee. Gone, but you will never be forgotten:

Worldwide show that sign, get the cash/
And flash like Kodak blind ‘em/
If I get the urge to splurge on bling I do it/
Its nobody’s concern, they ain’t got a thing to do with this (do with this)/
Shut the f**k up, please believe/
I’ll have the boy knees by the Philly freeze ya sleeve/
Givin’ them gangsta love like Eve and Keys/
The first piece worth ‘bout a set of D’s with G’s/
And haters think I ain’t peeped they steez/
Don’t think I don’t got peeps that’ll squeeze the things/
And trying to be M.O.P. ya be DOA/
Me and my man’s and them roll deep/
And we don’t play those games, no chain tuckin’/
Only congratulated they hate, f**k ya/
Roc City down here in the D/
Bling-bling its time to make them NV/
(lets do it)

Listen to "Make 'em NV"