Jordan Ferguson - J Dillas Donuts

This book owes its existence to David Barker, whose championing of the open submission process for the 33 1/3 series kept the door open long enough for me to stumble through. Special thanks as well to Ally Jane Grossan and Kaitlin Fontana for shepherding the series into a new era of continued success, and for handling my occasional panicked emails with calm and poise.

For their patience, insight, assistance, and, above all, time, thank you to: Jeff Jank, Eothen Alapatt, Freddy Anzures, Khaiam Dar, Jay Hodgson, House Shoes, Linda Hutcheon, Chris Manak, Ronnie Reese, J. Rocc, Joseph Schloss, Les Seaforth, Waajeed, Dean van Nguyen, and R. J. Wheaton.

For general support and sanity maintenance, thank you to Greg Atkinson, Glenn Evans, Melanie Correia, Chris Kozak, Jeff Meloche, the crews at YD 286 and HHK Toronto, the Toronto Public Library, and, my parents, Danny and Kathy Ferguson.

Raise it up for Ma Dukes.

Caitlin MacKinnon did the work.

Nicole Bryant kept the faith.

Sarah Jacobs saw it through.

The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center makes for an unlikely and unassuming hip-hop landmark. Located in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, the building is nevertheless a monument on the topography of hip-hop tragedies. In 1994, NWA founder Eric Eazy-E Wright died there from complications brought on by AIDS. Three years later, staff at Cedars-Sinai pronounced Christopher Wallace, the Notorious B.I.G., dead on arrival after suffering four gunshot wounds in a drive-by shooting as he left a party at the nearby Petersen Automotive Museum. Kanye West received reconstructive surgeries following a 2004 auto collision. A year before doctors repaired Wests jaw, Anthony Berkeley, known as the rapper Too Poetic and a founding member of the underground supergroup Gravediggaz, succumbed to colon cancer there, addressing his condition on the groups final album. Cedars has been name-checked in lyrics from Tyler the Creator, Slaughterhouse and Kool Keith. But, despite the hospitals role in some of the musics most tragic endings, Cedars-Sinai was also the site of completion for some of the weirdest, most beautiful and influential music the genre has ever seen.