The sound of Blue Note was firmly established in hip-hop in its early days through samples and remixes. But when DJ, producer, rapper and multi-instrumentalist Madlib was allowed to "plunder" the Blue Note archives for his masterpiece "Shades Of Blue" in 2003, he raised the bar to a new level. The result was a visionary album of remixes and reinterpretations of classic Blue Note recordings by Donald Byrd, Bobbi Humphrey, Ronnie Foster, Bobby Hutcherson and Wayne Shorter, among others.