The Story Behind J Dilla’s Donuts Album Cover

Have you ever wondered how the cover for Donuts was made? Director Andrew Gura gives the backstory behind the Donuts along with some insight into why your video will most likely not get played on BET.

It turns out that at the time that the Donuts cover was being created there were no photos of Dilla that had not been seen by the public. In the end, a shot from MED’s video shoot for “Push” was used. See if you can catch it at :22 in the video and compare it with the final Donuts cover after the break.

one completely unexpected outcome of the project was as follows: months later when stones throw art director jeff jank was designing the cover for dilla’s 2006 ‘donuts,’ he realized that he had no unseen photos of dilla and that dilla’s failing health made taking a new photo impossible. so he asked me if there were any stills from the shoot that might work for a record cover.

Read the entire story at director Andrew Gura’s Flickr page.

j-dilla-donuts.jpeg

9 thoughts on “The Story Behind J Dilla’s Donuts Album Cover”

  1. Not everything Dilla-related is interesting.. What’s next, the story behind how Dilla shaved himself..evet wondered about that? Well here’s the story…

  2. @digs, do remember that some people cherish, respect and love Dilla so any little information that they can get to hold on to the memory of Dilla is special. Dont take that away from those people. Be blessed!

    • No one gives a shit about your opinion. Some will find it interesting, others wont. No need to comment about how interested you are because im not interested although i will say that i find the video a little interesting so thanks Semantik. And after all, its Dilla month so why the hell not?!

    • I thought the same thing until I read the director’s comments in their entirety. It may not be entertaining at this point in time, but I definitely think it’s interesting and relevant to those who deeply value hip-hop production.

  3. Although I already knew that the cover was from the MED video I didn’t know the reasons why… and the guy above me totally contradicted himself…

  4. I think its funny that all this “cherish” idea arrived with the death certificate.

    I remember people cherishing producers like Lil John or Just Blaze in 2006 but I missed the Jay stay paid campaign in 2005.

    Personally I was mad at Dilla for most of the mid 90’s because he replaced J-Swift on the Pharcyde album. (I still consider Runnin Later on in life I realized crack replaced J-Swift ( you have to remember Al Gore was not completely done inventing the internet @ this time, these people were the Ghost you had to really do your research to find out the dirt. THANK YOU BLOGS for making life simple.

    But hey if this get’s hits as it obviously got my attention (thought there would be a little more to it than that) but it is what it is.

Comments are closed.