To discuss the Los Angeles beat scene is to invoke a sprawling, cross-pollinating collective of musicians that has drastically reworked the idea of what it means to make beats within (and without) the hip-hop tradition. The artists that can be found in these circles—DJing at Low End Theory nights at the Airliner in Lincoln Heights, putting out tracks and albums on the Alpha Pup and Brainfeeder labels, and eventually appearing in the credits of marquee bass music and hip-hop records—have built a strong, genre- and culture-spanning connection between leftfield electronic music and underground hip-hop, subsequently attracting everyone from Thom Yorke to Kendrick Lamar. By 2013, you could even hear their music on the radio in the ersatz Los Angeles of Grand Theft Auto V.

Much of the early groundwork for the scene was laid around 2006, when Daddy Kev established Low End Theory just as his burgeoning label Alpha Pup Records was starting to get off the ground. Low End Theory would soon provide a public laboratory for pivotal artists to cultivate followings, experiment with their styles, and connect with other musicians. By 2008, the scene had expanded to develop alongside the vision of Flying Lotus, whose Brainfeeder imprint quickly emerged on the heels of his breakthrough album Los Angeles and became home to one of the scene's most well-rounded rosters. With a well-known weekly live showcase and multiple labels working to get the work out into the world, it was just a matter of time until it all found a voracious audience.

The strange thing is, the L.A. beat scene still feels defiantly grassroots and adventurously weird, even after the amount of exposure and mainstream crossover it's received. The simplest way to consider this music is as a specifically SoCal take on IDM, using hip-hop, R&B, and jazz as a base and root influence rather than techno, acid house, or ambient; the distance closed by Internet music distribution and the deep well of influence these artists draw from puts them in a similar space as UK precursors like Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Squarepusher. Its methods are a little more accessible in a DIY sense, and the sense of populism in the L.A. scene—which is resoundingly multicultural like few American independent music scenes before it—keeps it grounded in an unpretentious space. The following tracks explore where the beat scene went once those first steps started turning into giant ones.