Madlib and Four Tet have finally unleashed their 16-track collaboration project Sound Ancestors. We were able to have a preview of what was to come when the duo released “Hopprock,” one of the project’s singles. The song set the tone for the project for sure, as the serene beat opens up then picks up steam as the song’s only words begin to play in the background:

You have five more messages. Message one, message deleted. Message two “Hi”, message deleted. Message three “It’s me calling”, message deleted. Message four “call”, message deleted. Message five, “Hi, calling again”, message deleted. Twenty-four minutes recording time left.

“Hopprock” was the second single from this upcoming album, the first one being “Road of the Lonely Ones,” which was released in December. In 2020, we saw two projects from the legendary Madlib: Pardon My French with Jahari Massamba Unit and Karriem Riggins, and The Professionals with The Professionals and Oh No. Prior to that was the headline-making collab project with Freddie Gibbs titled Bandana. In a previous interview, Madlib expanded a bit on his work dynamic with one of his collaborators Freddie Gibbs, thus, giving some insight into how he approaches his music making process:

“I don’t try to do music to be the best. I just try to make good music that I would sit and listen to. And if I like it, it comes out. We don’t overthink things. We just record. He kind of does trap music. I also do trap music, but I’m known for whatever you all know me for. It’s a mesh of my weird underground world and his gangster hood stuff, you know what I mean? So I treated it like Compton’s Most Wanted. They used raw loops and crazy story-telling and stuff.”

Be sure to press play on Madlib’s Sound Ancestors project down below.