A roundup of the best Madlib beats throughout the Oxnard, California producer’s career.

Madlib has spent the last 25 years either feverishly rifling through record store bins looking for new music to sample or cooped up at his house or freemason castle where he now rents space churning out beat after beat after beat. He is the bedroom producer’s bedroom producer. An enigma who has always seemed more interested in communing with his E-mu SP-1200 or Roland TB-303 synthesizer than collaborating or mixing at a studio.

Using literally dozens of aliases, Madlib has built a career as a genuine pioneer who, through sampling, has covered a mind-boggling amount of musical terrain, and who views the musical frontier to be limitless. Despite his prolific output he remains elusive, and he hasn’t released much music in the past five years.