Music
10 Essential Stones Throw Albums
Stones Throw Records celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Here are 10 timeless classics.
10 Essential Stones Throw Albums
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Stones Throw Records has never been a label to coast on past glories. The California hip-hop head Chris Manak, better known as Peanut Butter Wolf, dreamt up the imprint in 1996 as an outlet for the music he loved. Twenty years and many releases later, Stones Throw stands as one of the most respected labels in the game, with a tenacious commitment to seeking out new artists and sounds.
The Stones Throw back catalog is celebrated for its wide reach, welcoming wildly divergent takes on hip-hop, soul, R&B, funk, electronica and many shades in-between. The label also fosters side projects and surprising collaborations among its ranks. Over the years, Stones Throw has buzzed with the energy of friends coming together to let loose, whether it’s the mercurial team-up of Madlib and J Dilla as Jaylib or the more recent NxWorries partnership between Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge.
While Peanut Butter Wolf remains the ringleader, Stones Throw has a tight core team that keeps the label on course. One of those key players behind the scenes is the imprint’s elusive art director Jeff Jank, who illustrated and designed the covers for many defining Stones Throw releases. Jank’s arresting visual style has helped shape the label’s identity over two decades, with albums by Madlib, DāM-FunK and J Dilla all elevated by his inimitable art.
This week, RBMA Radio, broadcasting live from LA, will feature appearances from Peanut Butter Wolf and Mayer Hawthorne. A deep dive into the Stones Throw vault could keep your head nodding for weeks, and each diehard follower is likely to have a different list of essential releases. For the uninitiated, consider these 10 albums a Stones Throw starter pack.
1. Peanut Butter Wolf: "My Vinyl Weighs a Ton" (1999)
"My Vinyl Weighs a Ton" is a foundational record not just for Peanut Butter Wolf’s sound, but also Stones Throw as a whole. The producer was still reeling from the death of his best friend and collaborator Charizma when he founded the label, and "My Vinyl Weighs a Ton" feels like part of his catharsis.
"In Your Area" hooks us in with shout-outs to different corners of California, and the album stays charged throughout with a West Coast swagger. The beats are warm and crisp, the rapping is dexterous, and a deep love of hip-hop is imbued in every record scratch and throwback sample. Other albums from the Stones Throw catalog are better known, but "My Vinyl Weighs a Ton" remains the label’s bedrock.
2. Jaylib: "Champion Sound" (2003)
While "Madvillainy" is the gold standard for collaborative albums on Stones Throw (more on that below), the early 2000s inspired another nerd-melting team-up, this time between Madlib and J Dilla as Jaylib. Dropping in 2003, a year ahead of "Madvillainy," Jaylib’s "Champion Sound" is the product of two maestros channeling their mutual respect.
The project had a compeling hook from the start: Madlib would send Dilla beats to rap over, and Dilla would return the favor. As fun as it is to hear these two studio maestros rapping, unsurprisingly it’s those beats that shine brightest on "Champion Sound." "Madvillainy" may be the better realized album, but Jaylib’s back-and-forth captures two producers at the peak of their powers.
3. Madvillain: "Madvillainy" (2004)
"Champion Sound" was a solid warm-up, but 2004 brought the real hip-hop nerd must-have in the form of "Madvillainy." Fusing the oddball genius of producer Madlib and lyricist MF DOOM as Madvillain, the album became an instant cult classic. Right from the hammy movie dialogue sampled on album opener "The Illest Villains," it’s clear both beatmaker and MC have a whole lot in common. Over the next 40-odd minutes, we hear just how deep that rapport goes.
While MF DOOM’s slow-rolling flow masks the lyrical gymnastics going into each verse, "Madvillainy" finds Madlib fiercely on his game, laying down a bed of dusty drums, horns and jazz keys. On tracks like "Curls," they sound like two halves of the same hazy headspace. Twelve years on from "Madvillainy," fans are still holding out hope for its elusive sequel.
4. Georgia Anne Muldrow: "Olesi: Fragments of an Earth" (2006)
From Madlib to Dilla to DāM-FunK, the best-known Stones Throw acts amount to something of a boys club. While they’re undoubtedly outnumbered, there have always been compeling women in the label’s ranks. One of the standout names is Los Angeles singer and multi-instrumentalist Georgia Anne Muldrow, whose debut album "Olesi: Fragments of an Earth" was released on Stones Throw in 2006.
In a 2009 op-ed for the New York Times, Mos Def gave Muldrow a glowing endorsement. "I’ve never heard a human being sing like this," he wrote. "Her voice is wildly, finely expressive."
"Olesi: Fragments of an Earth" opens with the urgent and unsettling "New Orleans," announcing Muldrow as an artist with deep thoughts on race, identity and politics. That lyrical tension is matched throughout Olesi by restless and edgy production. At 21 tracks, the album can feel exhausting, but the talent at its center is undeniable.
5. J Dilla: "Donuts" (2006)
"Donuts" is another of those Stones Throw albums that makes hip-hop heads slip into reverie. J Dilla’s final full-length masterpiece (if we don’t count all those posthumous collections drawn from his vast reserves of unreleased music) still inspires fans to nerd out, journalists to rhapsodize and other beatmakers to try harder.
What makes "Donuts" all the more astounding is the fact that an album this brimming with life was largely made from a hospital bed while Dilla was grappling with the rare blood disorder TTP. The album dropped on Dilla’s 32nd birthday, in February 2006, and he died just three days later. While "Donuts" was swiftly hailed a classic album, Dilla’s death inspired a period of soul-searching for Stones Throw, with the label unsure of its next move. The silence was broken by a string of releases that veered wildly from a strict hip-hop path, with experimental oddballs like Baron Zen and Gary Wilson making their mark.
Today, "Donuts" is still a beatmaking masterclass, from the exhilarating "Light Works" to the wrenching soul samples on "Don’t Cry." For a man staring down his own mortality, Dilla was remarkably willing to let the light in. Such is the album’s enduring legacy that the producer’s uncle Herman Hayes opened a brick-and-mortar donut shop, Dilla’s Delights, in downtown Detroit earlier this year.
6. James Pants: "Welcome" (2008)
True story: Stones Throw mainstay James Pants had just attended his high school prom when he first met Peanut Butter Wolf. The label boss was passing through Austin, Texas, on tour, and Pants (at the time simply known as James Singleton) sent him a casual email invitation to go record shopping. The two strangers ended up bouncing around town in the pursuit of vinyl, and a friendship was born.
Pants places himself in the "weirdo category" on Stones Throw, sharing an off-kilter sensibility with the likes of Baron Zen and DāM-FunK. His 2008 debut album, "Welcome" is a gleeful mixed bag of styles, equally at ease with surf rock guitars as it is with drum machines. The producer had over a hundred works-in-progress vying for a place on "Welcome," which Peanut Butter Wolf helped file down to a manageable tracklist. In the deep vaults of Stones Throw, this album is the oddity that shouldn’t be ignored.
7. DāM-FunK: "Toeachizown" (2009)
If you’ve caught a DJ set from DāM-FunK, you know he’s equal parts music nerd and showman. Those two personalities also co-exist on the California native’s breakout album "Toeachizown," released by Stones Throw in 2009. It only takes one scan of the track titles on "Toeachizown" — from "Spacecapades" to "Love Is Here 2nite (I Can Feel It)" — to understand this guy exists on his own cosmic plane.
There’s a lot of ideas at work on "Toeachizown" and little interest in keeping them concise, with no less than 24 tracks split across two parts. DāM-FunK worked on the album with funk and soul icon Leon Sylvers III, and there’s an analog warmth to the whole affair. From the slow and sultry groove of "Come On Outside" to the spacey, squelchy synths on "Brookside Park," "Toeachizown" might be a long adventure, but it’s never dull.
8. Mayer Hawthorne: "A Strange Arrangement" (2009)
Growing up in Michigan, Drew Cohen was a hip-hop die-hard, a passion he channeled as DJ Haircut. After his sampling exploits caught the ear of Peanut Butter Wolf, Cohen morphed into the soul crooner Mayer Hawthorne to record his debut album for Stones Throw.
The transformation from DJ to frontman is fully realized on "A Strange Arrangement" with a vintage sound to match the dapper suit he’s sporting on the cover. The album also kept its creator solidly on tour for a couple of years, establishing "Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out," "Your Easy Lovin' Ain't Pleasin' Nothin," and "I Wish It Would Rain" as fan favorites.
Mayer Hawthorne’s next album "How Do You Do" was released by Universal Republic, but "A Strange Arrangement" proved Stones Throw could champion straight-laced soul as well as it did blunted beats.
9. Aloe Blacc: "Good Things" (2010)
While the 2014 Stones Throw documentary "Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton" is crowded with labelmates waxing lyrical, there’s one notable absentee: Aloe Blacc, who released two albums on Stones Throw before making the major label jump to Interscope. Propelled by its inescapable single "I Need a Dollar," "Good Things" was a commercial hit, delivering velvety soul cut through with sly social commentary. Blacc nailed the part of a throwback soul man, backed by a rich big band sound.
10. NxWorries: "Link Up & Suede" (2015)
In keeping with the Stones Throw tradition of eccentric pairings, 2015 brought producer Knxwledge and vocalist Anderson .Paak together as NxWorries. Both guys bring serious credentials to the partnership. Anderson .Paak is one of the most creative talents working in contemporary R&B, as confirmed by his recent album "Malibu," while Knxwledge’s hugely prolific output includes work on Kendrick Lamar’s "To Pimp a Butterfly."
Most of the tracks on the duo’s debut EP "Link Up & Suede" are brief sketches, with two prodigious players feeling out their common ground. That said, on the evidence of breakout single "Suede" and the freaky funk of EP closer "Droogs," there’s enough here to expect big things for the incoming NxWorries album. "Link Up & Suede" feels like the start of a unique friendship, continuing the Stones Throw lineage of creative kooks coming together to make sparks fly.