Earlier this year, the Manhattan-based producer Hot Sugar walked around his neighborhood at 3 a.m. "kicking stuff on the street like traffic cones, bikes, garbage [and] parked cars" and recorded the sounds the impact made. Using a technique he calls Associative Music, those sampled sounds were then processed into the beat for "Leverage," a brooding and cavernous hip-hop song that features an all-star line-up of Das Racist's Kool A.D., Houston's Fat Tony, Greedhead man Lakutis, and Nasty Nigel from Children of the Night. "This is basically a list of my favorite rappers I've been listening to over the past few years," explains Hot Sugar of the roster. The song heads up Hot Sugar's forthcoming, MiDi Murder EP, a seven-song set that's a prelude to his forthcoming full-length MiDi Murder album. "Some of these beats are among my weirdest or most complicated work," says Hot Sugar of the project. "One of them samples a pet rat walking across a piano, playing a melody that sounds like something I would've written either way."

Stream "Leverage" below: