J Dilla

Drums that swing loose and lurch slightly off the grid became J Dilla's signature. Working on an Akai MPC3000 with its quantise feature switched off, he set straight and swung rhythms against each other, a woozy friction Questlove later echoed on a live kit.

Raised in Detroit by an opera-singer mother and a jazz-bassist father, he taught himself in the basement with a growing record collection, then formed Slum Village with schoolmates. Productions for the Pharcyde, Janet Jackson and A Tribe Called Quest followed, many credited only to the Ummah, and as a Soulquarian he helped shape Common's Like Water for Chocolate.

Lupus and a rare blood disease wore him down; in 2005 he toured Europe from a wheelchair. Donuts, his final album, appeared three days before he died, aged 32.