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this woman ft. D'Angelo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW34RghpwpA&list=RDNW34RghpwpA&start_radio=1
Wait 4 U ft. Big Sean, Honey Bxby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmXBP5UEbH4&list=RDnmXBP5UEbH4&start_radio=1
https://www.spinmagazine.com/2026/08/busta-rhymes-j-dilla-album/
Busta Rhymes Revisits J Dilla’s Unfinished Business On New LP
'Dillagence 2' is built around 300 previously unreleased beats
Written by SPIN Staff |
August 25, 2026 - 1:06 pm
Busta Rhymes
Busta Rhymes onstage at the BET Awards 2023 in Los Angeles (photo: Paras Griffin / Getty Images for BET).
Nearly two decades after J Dilla’s death, Busta Rhymes is helping to open his vault. Today (Aug. 25), the veteran MC released Dillagence 2, an album built entirely from the Detroit producer’s music, including roughly 300 beats Dilla sent Busta over the course of their friendship and collaboration.
The project is a sequel of sorts to the pair’s original Dillagence mixtape, released in 2007, but this time Rhymes went considerably deeper into an archive he has spent years approaching sparingly. Across his albums over the past two decades, he generally used only one or two Dilla productions at a time. For Dillagence 2, he began seriously assembling the project in November 2025, working with Dilla’s estate and his mother, Ma Dukes, to ensure the music and its legacy were handled with care.
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“What felt right — that’s really what it boils down to,” Rhymes told The New York Times’ Popcast. “I don’t overthink the music no more. I think a lot of the times when you overthink shit, it ends up never coming out.”
Dilla’s famously loose rhythmic approach — what has come to be known as “Dilla Time” — is particularly suited to Rhymes; rhythmic instincts. Rather than treating the producer’s off-kilter beats as something to overcome, Rhymes hears their humanity. “I think the most interesting part about it was he mastered the understanding of knowing that the soulfulness of music comes from human timing,” he said. “Human timing is never perfectly on time all the time. He’s not the only producer that does it, you know what I’m saying? But he’s the only producer that makes me feel what I feel when he does it.”
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That relationship also changed Busta’s approach to his most famous technical trick. “If you notice, I’ve never tried the speed rap on a Dilla beat,” he said. “It doesn’t warrant that.”
Dillagence 2 features Common, Big Sean and Lil Wayne, who makes his first appearance over a Dilla production. It also contains previously unreleased vocals from D’Angelo, recorded more than two decades ago for a track that was never completed. Rhymes said he didn’t know the vocals existed until work on the album was underway. “I love the both of them, so I just want to do my part in delivering in that way — not just for the culture, but for them and for all of us,” he said of Dilla and D’Angelo.
That sense of responsibility runs throughout the project. Rhymes described Dilla as a man of few words who would quickly move from greeting to making music, but whose dedication to the creative process was infectious. “He loved to laugh and smile and just be in a feel-good energy space, but he was deeply entrenched in wanting to live in the creative space constantly,” he said. “And it would make me feel inspired to always want to challenge myself to marry his music in a way that felt as close to perfect as possible.”
The emotional reality of making music with artists who are no longer here, however, is something Rhymes separates from the creative process itself. “That doesn’t have anything to do with music,” he said “That has everything to do with death being so final. You just miss your family and your friends, and those two brothers, for me — it was very, very long-term friendships.”
And while Dillagence 2 looks backward, Rhymes remains acutely interested in what’s happening next. He points to artists including Ludacris, Missy Elliott, Kendrick Lamar and Doechii who have acknowledged his influence, while emphasizing that he sees himself as part of a much longer lineage. “I’m never the one that feels like I need to say it,” he said. “I think a lot of people say it themselves, and I think that’s where the reward is the greatest.”
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https://www.vibe.com/music/music-news/busta-rhymes-dangelo-j-dilla-this-woman-1235184134/
Busta Rhymes Unearths Unreleased J Dilla, D’Angelo Collaboration for New Album
'Dillagence II' created from nearly 300 unheard Dilla beats, with "This Woman" featuring a session the legendary producer did with D'Angelo about 20 years ago
By Jon Blistein
August 25, 2026 10:21am
Busta Rhymes’ new album full of previously unreleased J Dilla beats also features a posthumous feature from D’Angelo.
Rhymes made Dillagence II out of almost 300 unreleased beats that Dilla gave him before the legendary producer died in 2006. One of those beats came from a session Dilla and D’Angelo did about 20 years ago that never materialized into a proper project. “They started something and it just never got finished,” Busta recently told The New York Times. “I love both of them, so I just want to do my part in delivering in that way — not just for the culture, but for them and for all of us.”
What the pair made together now serves as the gentle chorus on “This Woman,” featuring what appears to be a scratch vocal of D’Angelo interpolating Sister Nancy’s legendary dancehall track “Bam Bam.” “This woman, never troubled no one / But if you trouble this woman, it will be a…” D’Angelo croons in his immaculate falsetto before trailing off into a version of “Bam Bam”’s famous, wordless hook. Of course, even a D’Angelo scratch vocal makes for a pristine chorus, especially over a Dilla groove elegantly textured with prickly guitars and burbling marimbas.
“This Woman” will also get an official music video, directed by Hype Williams. The visual is slated to drop later today at 12 p.m. ET.
Though they were friends for decades, Busta and D’Angelo never released any music together while D’Angelo was alive. After D’Angelo died last October, Busta released a tribute song, “Magic,” in which he rapped about meeting D’Angelo for the first time while in the studio with A Tribe Called Quest, and celebrated the power of D’s music and life.
“I feel like the Earth shifted when D came to do music,” Busta said in an accompanying interview with Okayplayer. “He was the embodiment of some shit that was a complete balance of what our ancestors created, to where he took it. There’s nothing under the sun that hasn’t already been done. But it’s a whole other thing to make it your own and combine what has already been done with what hasn’t been done yet.”
Along with D’Angelo on “This Woman,” Dillagence II boasts an array of features across its 19 tracks, including Lil Wayne, Common, Big Sean, Anderson .Paak, Ludacris, and Jon Batiste.
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