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Seattle superproducer Jake One recently released 40 minutes of hiphop with rapper Freeway, one of the most original voices in rap, on a free downloadable mixtape called "The Beat Made Me Do It." Get it here.

The compositions are simple: looped samples of funk and soul records Jake likes from the late '70s and early '80s. He made the whole thing in three or four hours, he estimates.

"I just grabbed some records and looped 'em up. [Freeway] wanted to do a mixtape and I didn't want to do what everyone else does, rap on 'A Milli' or whatever beat is hot at the moment."

Jake and Freeway are a team; the mixtape promotes "Stimulus Package," the duo's album coming out Febrary 2010.

Jake says during the week the mixtape came together, he would email Freeway a track, and Freeway would make up little bits of rhyme off the top of his head and record them as he went along, stitching together verses, then email the tracks back. That's how most of the mixtape happened, with very little writing or planning.

"For him to do that, it's basically nothing. It's an exercise for him."

Really? Off the top of his head?

"Yeah, four bars, eight bars at a time and go back and do another. He's more about style. He has a really unique style. It's more about his rhythm and flows than what he's saying sometimes. It's about patterns."

The loops Jake made are bouncy and not hard on the ears like some club-rap can be. He laughs when I bring up "Heart Throbs."

"Yeah, that's some Dam-Funk s___, some boogie. He wore that record out."

The sample comes from the group Midnight Express, a song called "Danger Zone" (1983). Jake laughs and says I should check out the video on YouTube, says it's hilarious. He's right. Check the local news clip after the song is done. Priceless.

These days, Jake's working with Eminem and Dr. Dre.

"I'm one of [Dr. Dre's] in-house producers. I just try and send him stuff that's good and stay out of the way. It's crazy to have one of my idols acknowledge me."

He's about to start work on Brother Ali's next album, which he'll probably produce the entirety of. Locally, Jake's working with Matson on Music favorite Fatal Lucciauno.

"Got a bunch of songs for that. I think he's got some really good records. I've done about nine or 10 songs for Fatal so far, and I really like about five or six."

Below is the art for the Jake/Freeway mixtape.