Busta Rhymes spent almost 20 years holding on to J Dilla's beats, and Dillagence II is what he did with them. The sequel arrived on streaming services Tuesday (Aug. 25) with 19 tracks, a guest list that spans Lil Wayne, Common, Big Sean, Ludacris, Talib Kweli and Anderson .Paak, and one record that matters more than the rest: “This Woman,” with D'Angelo.
D'Angelo, who Billboard notes died of pancreatic cancer in 2025, is on “This Woman” because of a session he and Dilla did more than 20 years ago and never finished. Busta didn't know it existed until word about the project spread, he told the New York Times' Popcast.
I was gifted with something that they did that they didn't finish when the word started to spread about this project. I didn't know that it existed because it was done 20-something years ago.
Busta Rhymes, to The New York Times' Popcast, Billboard
What “This Woman” sounds like
Rolling Stone describes what appears to be a scratch vocal, D'Angelo interpolating Sister Nancy's “Bam Bam,” as a gentle chorus over a Dilla groove “elegantly textured with prickly guitars and burbling marimbas.” It adds that even a scratch vocal from D'Angelo makes a pristine hook. The song got a video directed by Hype Williams, who has worked with both Busta and D'Angelo, due later the same day. Hear the track below.
Why it matters
The original Dillagence came in 2007, just over a year after Dilla died in February 2006. Busta says he has nearly 300 of Dilla's beats, a portion of which he polished to make this record, and he told Popcast how he remembers working with him: “In my experience with Dilla, he was a man of few words. I heard him talk more when he was rhyming than in actual conversation.”
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The album also lands in the middle of an argument over whether veterans still need to release albums. HotNewHipHop frames it as an answer to 50 Cent's view that hip-hop is youth culture and elder statesmen don't need them. At 54, Busta also released Dragon Season… Equinox last year, per Billboard.
The album is one of the picks in our best new music of August. What's next: more of the Dilla archive. Busta told Okayplayer, per Rolling Stone, that D'Angelo's arrival in the studio felt like “the Earth shifted.” He honored him last year with a tribute song, “Magic.”
- Album
- Dillagence II, 19 tracks
- Out
- Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026
- Standout
- “This Woman,” featuring D'Angelo
- Original
- Dillagence, 2007
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
