Donuts is the second and final studio album by the American hip hop producer J Dilla, released on February 7, 2006, by Stones Throw Records. It was released on the day of his 32nd birthday, three days before his death. The album was recorded in 2005, largely during J Dilla's extended stay at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center due to complications from thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) and lupus. Twenty-nine of the album's thirty-one tracks were recorded in J Dilla's hospital room, using a 45-rpm record player and a Boss SP-303 sampler. Donuts received widespread critical acclaim for its dense, eclectic sampling and its perceived confrontation of mortality. Pitchfork placed the album at number 38 on their list of the top 50 albums of 2006 and at number 66 on their list of the top 200 albums of the 2000s. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the album at 386 in their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It is regarded, by fans and critics alike, as J Dilla's magnum opus, a classic of instrumental hip hop, and one of the most influential hip hop albums of all time, with artists of many genres citing it as an inspiration. Background In 2002, J Dilla had been diagnosed with thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, an incurable disease of the blood, while also battling lupus, which had been diagnosed a year previously. According to close friend and fellow producer Karriem Riggins, the impetus for Donuts came during an extended hospital stay in the summer of 2005. In his last interview, which was granted to Scratch Magazine in November 2005, Dilla briefly spoke about the creation of the album: In the December 2006 issue of The Fader, J Dilla's mother Maureen Yancey, a former opera singer, spoke of watching her son's daily routine during the making of Donuts: Composition Donuts is an instrumental hip hop album; the only lyrics on it are short phrases and gasps taken from various records. Donuts contains 31 tracks, which was J Dilla's age at the time of recording. Most songs are quite short, running at lengths of 1–1.5 minutes each, and vary in style and tone. Clash called the album "a conversation between two completely different producers". The original press release for the album compared it to scanning radio stations in an unfamiliar city. The track order is also unusual: the album begins with an outro and ends with the intro. According to