J Dilla & Madlib Diggin' in the Crates

J Dilla & Madlib diggin' in the Crates at Discomania - São Paolo, 2005.

As you may know, I find Pinterest a great source to find old or rather unknown photos of rappers and vinyls. Today, while navigating through HHND's Pinterest stream, I stumbled upon a great photo of J Dilla and Madlib. Using my Google search skills, I managed to find more details about this great photo.

It turns out the photo was made by photographer B+ a.k.a. Brian Cross on a short trip to Brazil in 2005. J Dilla and Madlib were photographed when they were in São Paolo at Discomania on Rua Augusta Street.

Here is Brian's depiction of J Dilla's trip to Brazil:

"This was 2005. We were scheduled to screen Keepintime in Brazil at SESC [in São Paulo] as part of a hip-hop film festival. And on the last night of the festival they wanted Otis to play. And so Otis by that point was super into Brazil, was paying his own ticket to come to Brazil with us – that kind of thing. So this [offer to play the festival] was money and a plane ticket and hotel rooms and it was all hooked up. And he could bring a DJ. And so I remember we went to Stones Throw one time and we ran into him and he was like, “We could bring Dilla!”
At that time, we were making Brasilintime. So I’m like, fuckin’ [Dilla’s] the first person to sample a Brazilian record. The first dude [in hip-hop] to be feeling that shit – to make [Pharcyde's] “Runnin’.” Let’s totally do it, let’s get Dilla to Brazil. Like that’s huge. In our world that’s like, wow, some kind of circle has been completed somehow.

We called him from the phone that minute. And he was just hype, “Hell yeah, I wanna do it.” [laughs] But we didn’t realize how sick he was. The Copa Airlines flights would leave at like one or two in the morning. So we picked him up from the house and I noticed when we took him out to the car he looked kind of bent over a bit and he looked very weak. And when we were at the airport we were like [whispers], yo, Dilla looks really weak. [We realized] he was far too weak to be traveling. He shouldn’t have been traveling. Put his life in danger basically.

He was really only there for three days. He got to go digging. We went for a few hours to Discomania on Rua Augusta – it was pretty close to the hotel where we were. And there’s records there for days. At that time Dilla went in on 45s, man. And pulled out a gang of records. And then we went back to the hotel. Eric had the [portable record] player and we sat there and played 45s and it was like, damn, dude! We were trippin’ on him. He pulled cheap, hard records. Like disco shit we weren’t hip to. And they went out with him in the afternoon. I had to do something – press or some shit. They took him to Carlinhos’ Discos Seite in the afternoon. So he had the experience.

But then he went to the hospital and they had to send him back [to L.A.] on an ambulance flight. Me and Otis took him to the airport, kind of an emergency ticket. They wouldn’t release him from the hospital unless he was gonna stay in the hospital [back home] and he was gonna be in the hospital for a while. He didn’t wanna stay in the hospital [in Brazil]. So they said, well, we’ll put you on an emergency flight – meaning when the airplane lands in L.A. there’s an ambulance waiting on the runway for him. And then straight back to Cedar-Sinai. 

It was a mistake, man. It was something that… it’s just the way things go down. You talk to him on the phone, he seems like, yeah, he wants to go. He seems like he’s hyped. Yeah, you hear fragility in his voice. You know the dude’s been very, very sick. So you figure it’s on the up and up. The guy’s 32. You’re not thinking he could die. But Ma Dukes thanked us [for taking him]. At the funeral Ma Dukes came up to me and Eric and said, you guys fulfilled a dream of his to go to Brazil. It was something fulfilled. To feel good about."

More of B+'s work can be seen at Mochilla.