About 60 minutes Northwest of Los Angeles in a town called Oxnard, the archetypal crate digger painstakingly constructs a weekly beat tape. Stringing together loops only from vinyl outputs deemed worthy (read: no breakbeat records), each cassette brings forth a new piece of that Lootpack a.k.a. LP sound.

Soundpieces: The Antidote (Stones Throw) is the result of over 100 chrome collections from the musical intellect of Madlib, the Lootpack's eclectic producer/MC/crate digger. Helping turn the raw beats into tight sonic compositions are fellow mic-clutcher Wild Child and cut creator DJ Romes. Their debut full-length represents a fanatical patience lasting almost a decade-the amount of time they waited as a group to come out on their own terms.

After officially forming Lootpack in 1990, a chance meeting one year later with King Tee began their well-known affiliation with one of the West's most talented and influential rap conglomerates-the Likwit Crew. "Jack [Wild Child] met him and we gave Tash and King Tee our demo tape and they liked it," remembers Madlib. "From then on, I did beats on each of their albums, each album they had. And they put me down, put the Lootpack down."

The Alkaholiks put them down to the tune of including the group on each of their Loud Records releases. It provided international exposure and what appears to be an oddball pairing-Lootpack and the Likwit. The LPs don't drink or smoke much, and they regularly avoid cursing in their rhymes. This may not sound like those hip-hop drunkies-but peel away from the outer layer and a symbiotic relationship is revealed. Both acts broke sound barriers away from Cali's gangsta aesthetic with versatile production techniques (don't forget the Liks' E-Swift and Madlib co-produced Originoo Gunn Clappaz's "Flappin"), and the two crews share a penchant for verbal acrobatics. As Tash and J-Ro of the Liks posses off kilter flows undeniably their own, so do the rhyming duo from the LPs. Madlib offers up ill structures in a drowsy, robotic vocal style that lends itself to deep concentration over every word he utters. Wild Child specializes in off cadence rhyming, often randomly shifting speeds and tones.

Granted, the LPs experienced some degree of success working consistently with the Liks, but that didn't secure them a deal of their own, or at least a fair one. "They were trying to make you change how you really want to come out. I'd rather just do music out of my room than be a slave," says Madlib about the group's demo shopping days.

To combat the insanity that is the rap game, Madlib's pops stepped in and financed their self produced Psyche Move EP in 1996. The record's distributor, TRC, employed Peanut Butter Wolf at the time and he immediately became intent on signing the click. In the words of Wild Child, they signed with Stones Throw after a long courting period because, "He really liked the stuff we had already done and he didn't want to change anything."

Now that Soundpieces has hit the American and European markets, response to their debut has been overwhelming. Of course there have been the thousands of fans that showed love at their recent 14-city Superrappin European tour, as well as stops in Los Angeles and Atlanta. Props are continually delivered to the 24 track opus, which includes straight gems like "Long Awaited" featuring Dilated Peoples, the head bobbing organ stabs of "The Anthem" and "Crate Diggin," an oddball track filled with high pitched bleeps and keyboards describing Madlib's love affair with mining for wax. As he explains on that cut,"I got CDs in my crates like crack in my pocket/Yeah right/Neither of the above."

Madlib's production contributions are so varied that one moment he brings it Alkie style with his Likwit crew compatriots on "Likwit Fusion." The next, he submits a minimalist track sounding like it was snatched straight from the lab of Ali Shaheed Muhammed, Jay-Dee and Q-Tip, collectively known as the Ummah.

A member of the Ummah actually had a hand in contacting Stones Throw to personally explain how much they are feeling Soundpieces. In an e-mail from ?uestlove of the Roots, the gifted drummer wrote that he, Jay-Dee (Ummah, Slum Village) and D'Angelo could not stop listening to the album. ?uestlove even described Soundpieces as "sheer genius." The trio seemed shocked by the praise, but when heavy hitters like that give you props, it's validation time. "It's worth it now," says Madlib contentedly. "I was feeling like nothing was going to come out of this music because I've been doing this since like '88 seriously, so it's kind of cool the heads in the industry are buggin' off stuff too. That's who we also do it for. To inspire other artists that inspire us."