Declaime — aka Dudley Perkins — is an Oxnard original, West Coast underground pioneer and one of the voices present at the ground floor of the sound that would become Stones Throw.

Coming up alongside Madlib, Oh No, MED, Kankick, DJ Romes and the wider Oxnard crew, Declaime was there while dusty loops, crooked drums, deep record knowledge and left-field ideas were turning into a new language for underground hip-hop. His relationship with Madlib goes back to childhood; by the early ’90s they were already recording together, years before the rest of the world caught up.

Across records like Andsoitisaid and his work as Dudley Perkins, Declaime stretched that language further — moving between raw emceeing, soul, spirituality, humour, psychedelia and completely unfiltered self-expression. His Madlib-produced A Lil' Light pushed him beyond rapping altogether, into the strange, cracked soul music that became another unmistakable part of his catalogue.

Riff Pillage brings that history into the present: reissuing Andsoitisaid, pairing Declaime with SaltChunkJerry for the fuzzed-out Black Fuzz, and digging even further back into the vaults for Illminded — raw Declaime and Madlib recordings from the early days, pulled from old cassette tapes and finally brought into the light.