J Dilla’s last days on Frank N Dank’s “European Vacation”
Nolan Strong at HipHop-Elements.com has written about J Dilla and Frank N Dank’s new European Vacation dvd (which is in stores now).
Frank N Dank talk about Dilla and the footage from Europe that made the cut:
“We’ve known Dilla since 1984, before there were beats, rhymes or any of that,” Frank told AllHipHop.com. “That’s what this whole thing was built on. Not music, not any of the rap stuff. He was a soldier. This DVD will show all the people who love Dilla and didn’t get to know him as a person, it shows the type of person he was. He didn’t have to go on this tour, he chose to. He loved what he did and he wanted to give that love back to the people who supported him.”
The DVD, which also features former group member Phat Kat (1st Down) and DJ Rhettmatic, follows J. Dilla and Frank-N-Dank traveling across Europe, performing at various sold out shows.
While J. Dilla was confined to a wheel chair during the time European Vacation was filmed, both Frank and Dank revealed that J. Dilla sanctioned and approved the taping, to document his love for the culture.
“We didn’t know how sick he was until he came off the plane,” Frank said. Dank confirmed adding: “Nobody knew he was sick. He was a real personal individual.”
“He’s not gonna tell you ‘I’m sick,’ Dank continued. “So when we got to the airport in London and it was a shocker. It made me want to break down and cry for real, cause my man is in a wheel chair. But at the same time I had to be strong for him for the tour. I carried him every single night, to the venue and after the venues.”
Dank said that another purpose of the DVD is to further educate United States Hip-Hop fans about Dilla’s legacy and the impact that he had on the landscape of Hip-Hop.
“You see a movement, people from another country that don’t speak any English, but they know every song,” Dank said of Dilla’s European fans. “Then you get people here in America and they don’t know none of this s**t.”
Read the full article here.
