RJD2 - The Colossus . You may have heard RJD2's beats before, but didn't know it. One of his signature beats, Ghostwriter, has been used for several commercials and showcases his mastery of the art of the hip-hop sampling. The song ebbs, drops, and peaks while utilizing a highly complex drum sample. It never bores, and continually seeks to intrigue.

After producing mostly instrumental albums and for noted underground legends such as Blueprint, he started to gradually move away from movie score tunes such as The Horror and into darker, more introspective tunes that featured his singing voice. Although I personally prefer his strictly instrumental work, The Colossus does a good job of balancing brooding beats with thankfully muted singing and head-knockin', triumphant tunes such as "Let There Be Horns:"

I love this track because of its visual imagery: notice how the middle of the track contains a furious drum sample which has a distinctive Cuban Jazz flavor. The "interlude" of the track even sprinkles some electric guitar amid trumpet blasts, and smoothly connects the song toward its ultimately thrilling conclusion.

Sound Tribe Sector 9 - Artifact . Sound Tribe Sector 9's sound often defies definition - it combines so many different types of music together that they can only be fully described by emotions. "Better Day" is spaced out, mellow, and mysterious, with frequent electronic references and a beautiful singer sparsely lending her talents to fleshing out the track. "Somesing" contains some elements of drum and bass along with electronica, but its musical structure is so organic and complex that it's hard to pinpoint where one genre's influence begins and where another ends. Wikipedia has even mentioned that this song has a composition similar to classical music.. although I can't tell. What I do know, however, is that this album is NOT boring, unique, and worth a listen.

Oh No - The Ethiopium . As star producers come and go, Oh No has been in the background laboriously perfecting and mastering his craft of sampling, beat-making, and mixing. The result? The Ethiopium is a funky tour de force of two minute sound bites: a throwback to the old days of producing beat tapes and passing them around your peers, hoping that one of them will find a beat hot enough to rap over. Not content to use guitars, keyboards, and violins in his beats, Oh No taps into the musical tapestry of the music of Ethiopia with traditional Ethiopian instruments and sensibilities, such as the deftly placed chanting in "The Pain" and his creative use of instruments such as the krar. Taking J. Dilla's style of bite sized, dynamic beats, each track gives you a taste, establishes a theme, then abruptly stops and leaves you wanting more.