Shinola’s Great American timepiece series is a collection of limited-edition watches and accessories that honor important and influential figures in American history and culture. Launched in 2013 with a tribute to the Wright Brothers, the series celebrates Americans whose legacies have left a lasting impact on the nation. Some notable alumni of the series are Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson and Minoru Yamasaki.
Each and every Shinola watch is hand-crafted in Detroit, Michigan, so for the 2025 edition, they decided to highlight one of their hometown heroes, James Yancey, professionally known as J Dilla (or Jay Dee if you go back, back.)
So to celebrate the life and legacy of the late, great J Dilla, Shinola connected with the Dilla estate to craft not one – but two – very special timepieces that are extremely limited and available on May 15th. The watches contain plenty of Easter eggs and layered meanings – enough to have every Dillahead chomping at the bit to get their hands on one.
“At Shinola, we celebrate craft in all its forms and this collaboration is a love letter to that creative ethos. J Dilla’s music is meticulous, soulful, and visionary—qualities we strive to embody in everything we make. By honoring him as a Great American, we’re reminding the next generation of artists, makers, and dreamers that greatness can come from anywhere, especially Detroit. J Dilla broke boundaries with every beat and his music was built with care, grit, and soul—every sound placed with purpose. That same energy guided our hands in crafting this collection. It’s a reflection of his process, his passion, and the legacy he left behind. To recognize him through this collection is both a hometown honor and a cultural responsibility.”
I sat down with Philip Pirkovic the Director of Brand & Partnerships and Greg Verras, Shinola’s Director of Watch Design to chat about the Dilla Timepiece – the first double entendre watch.
FSD: Shinola and J Dilla are very strong and important brands to Detroit, so this collaboration makes so much sense to me – both parties are known for their innovative craftsmanship. Tell me how did this collab come together?
Philip Pirkovic: My initial thought was “how do we rethink the Great American series?”
Like, you know, here’s who we’ve done in the past, but how do we kind of add some cultural relevancy to it? So that was the initial idea in my head.
Greg and I are obsessed with hip-hop and us being in Detroit – when you understand and study how Dilla approached the craft – it just made so much sense. The way he approached music is the way Greg and team approach making our watches.
Greg Verras: I’ll take credit for the first person to agree with Phil that we should do J Dilla. When he first pitched it some people didn’t know who he was, but I thought “Wait, what? That’s actually kind of crazy.” The first thing that popped in my head is that Dilla was the craftsman of his genre. The attention to detail he would put into things. Then I started doing more research and read Dan Charnas’ book [Dilla Time] – which is an incredible book – and it really shed light on why Dilla was a cut above the rest.
Our filters for Great Americans is like people that significantly contribute to either arts and engineering, or sports and athletes. But generally people who had to persevere to get to their destination. Reading Dilla’s story, he didn’t have every resource, and he had to use what he had available. He then met people along the way that helped him get to where he was going.
PP: There are so many people who have talent who never make it. They’re great but for whatever reason they’re never seen or heard. Dilla just had that perseverance to make it. He had unwavering dedication to his craft. An obsession with the craft.
FSD: How long does it take to build a watch and when did you begin on this project?
PP: A lot of that I had to learn, because it may have been my first or second month here – I quickly realized how long it takes to build a watch.
GV: We started in January of 2023. A big chunk of that is the design phase, but once you’ve got a design that you like it takes about a good year to manufacture and build all the components. Then you have to get it to Detroit for assembly and quality control and all that. From that it’s about a year until it hits the shelf.
PP: A year of concept and theme and ideas and then another year for production. It takes us about 18-24 months when we do something new.
FSD: So how did you pitch this to the estate and get their approval?
GV: I cold messaged Dan Charnas and he wrote me back and he connected us with the estate. They were familiar with the brand and had seen some of the other Great Americans that we did.
We just try to honor everybody we work with and bring a special touch to it. They thought we had some similarities in our brands and wanted to establish Dilla for the next generation. They thought we could handle it well and pay our respect the right way.
FSD: Of course everyone is going to ask if there’s a music component to the watch? An album or instrumental series to go along with it…
GV: We always wanted to do a musical component to this and we kicked around a few ideas, and the estate pushed us to add a few things, so we developed a DJ bag based on our messenger bag.
PP: We had a lot of talks to take some music and incorporate it with a vinyl or cassette that comes with the watch but we ultimately landed on the bag. Because as you know, we’re not in the music business, we’re in the product business. And the world of music licensing is very complicated. So we created this really incredible vinyl bag with our product development team. It holds around 30-40 albums.
GV: It was a late add with a lot of energy around it. But the bag will come with a special release of Jay Loves Japan. It will be very small, very limited. The album will come free with the bag as a surprise.
PP: The collection will be the bag and we actually have two watches that we’re doing. There was just so much inspiration and things to pull from visually, so we did two watches. Both very limited.
FSD: Can you disclose just how limited?
GV: The Runwell chronograph model will be 500 units. The Lightworks Edition will be 150.
FSD: Is that a cassette tape inside the dial?
GV: Yeah, instead of chronograph eyes – normally they were to have hands – so we put little discs on them. Little transparent discs. And so that little tooth part will actually turn when you run the chronograph. Like a cassette.
The cassette tape represents his craftsmanship, even with rudimentary equipment, meaning the real genius was in him and not necessarily the tool.
PP: So before we really even designed the watch, we wanted to establish an aesthetic.
We ended up calling it the Lightworks aesthetic.
GV: There’s not a ton of visual material around Dilla. But one of those things is the “Lightworks” music video he did with Stone’s Throw. So we grabbed a lot of the colors out of that, like the blues and purples and you see.
PP: And blue blue happens to be a pretty good watch color, too. So there’s like some symmetry there.
GV: The Lightworks edition will be our first skeletonized automatic movement, and kind of takes the collection to the next level. The chronograph is at a lower price point, but the Lightworks with the skeletonized automatic is even more exclusive – with only 150 pieces, and it’s our first skeleton design.
With both of these watches, we just wanted to push the layering as far as we could. If you’re familiar with our current watches, they’re mostly reserved, and really classic. So this was a fun project to push ourselves with dial layering and these multi-piece insane dials.
PP: And when we say skeleton that means you can see through the watch. It’s pretty common in the watch industry, but for this one you can see the inner-workings of the watch. It also has a sapphire dial.
GV: One fun moment was meeting with his daughters. Phil brought them in and they were kind of floored that we didn’t just slap a Dilla Donut on the dial and call it a day.
PP: Everyone asked us “where is the donut?” But that’s exactly what we didn’t want to do.
FSD: Thank you because that would’ve been the most obvious choice
PP: We printed out all of his album covers for inspiration. We had a few loose ideas, but as Greg and team kept working on it we kept gravitating towards the “Lightworks” music video.
GV: So there’s another design credit on this – the first time we’ve worked with an outside studio. We worked with UndGrd Studios from Detroit. We just kind of met them at the right place, right time. And they presented me this Buick GNX-themed watch idea.
FSD: Before the Kendrick Lamar album?
GV: Way before. This was like 2023. But we thought it was an incredible idea. So we knew these guys knew what was up. It just reinforced why it was awesome to work with these guys.
They had an AI deck – and this was the early days of AI – and I initially wasn’t into it. But I quickly got over it and realized these guys were embracing new technology – which sounded a lot like what Dilla did as his career progressed. He started with cassette tapes but then moved on to more digital means of production along the way. He never let the tool get in the way of what he was doing. He was famous for using the MPC in a way that humanized it and made it sound relaxed and natural and not robotic.
FSD: Just looking at the watch it appears there are a ton of Easter eggs hidden in the design
GV: The book Dilla Time [by Dan Charnas] was a huge part of this story – because Dilla was all about time and timing. He created his own time. So we had to do something surrounding his unique sensibility around timing. So basically all the tracking you see around the dial – it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense on the watch – and it’s something we usually wouldn’t do. But since his time was a little bit rushed we added that. It’s straight time at the top, then swing time below. Some shapes are bass notes, and there are other patterns that represent musical notes and ideas.
There are just so many Easter eggs in here, so we’ve been deciding if we’re gonna let people discover them on their own or tell people. Hopefully people will pick up on it.
FSD: So this is basically a double entendre watch
PP: Yes. But we let the cassette tape hit you over the head.
GV: And we pulled graphics from some of his old beat tapes and based it off those. Even down to the screws on the cassettes.
We make all of our straps in house with our leather team, so on this we embossed eight bars into the strap. Just another musical reference.
PP: So 16 bars total on the watch.
And on the back of the watch you see the Dilla Time graphic that Dan and his team developed.
PP: And that’s not even the craziest part. The packaging to me is the craziest part. It’s all a cassette reference. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but this is what takes it to the next level. You can see through it, like you could see a cassette through the packaging. There are credits on the side like a cassette tape. And we had Dan graciously write a pre-blurb on it.
FSD: The details are incredible. You guys really went above and beyond.
PP: And that’s the fun part. When I brought Dilla up to Greg, I could see him get so excited about it. The same way Dilla approached making music is the same way Greg and the team approach all of our watches. They all start with a story. And we want to be the conduit to that story because we tell stories through product. We’re just so excited about it. We loved working with his estate and honoring Dilla as a Great American.
GV: Nearly 20 years after his death people are still trying to decode his music and figure out the magic behind it. And that goes into why the watch looks so complex. We want people to look at it and discover something they didn’t notice five years later.
FSD: How can people buy the watches?
PP: So we have a waitlist up right now. We announced that we were doing Dilla as a Great American about a month ago and we worked with Big Sean on that, and he narrated the piece. He talks about Dilla’s legacy and importance to Detroit. And that leads people to a waitlist, which is currently at almost 3000 people.
On May 15th, the people on the waitlist will get the email to purchase first and they’ll have a few hour window to purchase. Whoever is on the waitlist gets first access and then the general public will get the email around noon. It will be mostly direct to consumer and I think we’ll have some in the Michigan doors – the Canfield store and the Woodward store.
The watch is available here now
