Busta Rhymes revisits J Dilla's unfinished work on new LP

On Aug. 25, Busta Rhymes released Dillagence 2, a new album built entirely from J Dilla's music, drawing on roughly 300 unreleased beats the Detroit producer sent him over the course of their friendship. The project arrives nearly two decades after Dilla's death in 2006, with Rhymes, a veteran voice in hip-hop for more than three decades, finally digging deep into an archive he had approached sparingly across his own albums for years.

Dillagence 2 is a sequel to the pair's 2007 mixtape Dillagence, but this time Rhymes went further into the archive, beginning serious work on the album in November 2025. He worked with Dilla's estate and his mother, Ma Dukes, to make sure the material was handled carefully. "I don't overthink the music no more," he told the New York Times' Popcast, explaining that he lets songs come together instinctively rather than forcing them.

Dilla's famously loose, off-kilter rhythmic approach, known as "Dilla Time," suits Rhymes' own sense of timing, he said, describing the producer as someone who understood that "the soulfulness of music comes from human timing." Rather than deploying his signature rapid-fire flow over Dilla's beats, Rhymes said he has never attempted it on a Dilla production, feeling it doesn't fit the material.

The album features guest verses from Common, Big Sean and Lil Wayne, who raps over a Dilla beat for the first time. It also includes previously unreleased vocals from D'Angelo, recorded more than two decades ago for a song that was never finished; Rhymes said he did not know the vocals existed until work on Dillagence 2 was already underway.

Despite the retrospective nature of the project, Rhymes said he remains focused on what comes next, pointing to younger artists including Ludacris, Missy Elliott, Kendrick Lamar and Doechii who have cited his influence on their own music.