Beat Culture & the SP-404: Dibia$e, Flying Lotus and Ras G

In the early 2000’s, Los Angeles cultivated an underground hip-hop beat culture, where every budding producer were on the same wavelength, experimenting like mad scientists in laboratories, and producing their next instrumental masterpieces. A community formed around these artists who crafted a lo-fi, gritty sound that warbled and hissed like worn cassette tapes and vinyl. Glitched effects, samples and loops—driven along by a minimal kick/snare/hat groove—were created and performed on the Roland SP-404 Sa