“Hip-hop was stale, like the worst kind of bread you don’t even want to feed to ducks,” recalls Portishead's Geoff Barrow of the creative torpor that afflicted the world of beats and rhymes in the late 1990s. In part it was Stones Throw Records that helped rescue the rap game—and now it is getting its due as the subject of a compelling new documentary directed by Jeff Broadway, Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton. Equal parts tragedy and celebration of the human spirit, the film shows how the tiny independent inspired some of the biggest names in music, from Kanye West to Snoop Dogg, the Beastie Boys to the Roots.

Stones Throw is the life’s work of Californian Chris Manak, better known as Peanut Butter Wolf. Manak launched the Los Angeles imprint in 1996, to put out posthumously the rhymes of his close friend and musical partner Charles Hicks, aka Charizma, shot dead in a car-jacking at the age of 20. As the label’s reputation grew, Wolf found a new figure to inspire him in the shape of prodigious beat alchemist, Madlib. Working in the studio from 7pm to 7am every day and fueling his endeavors with epic quantities of magic mushrooms, Madlib took hip-hop to new levels of nuance. His innovations earned small-time Stones Throw a big-time reputation, and attracted another visionary to the label—Detroit's J Dilla, whose production skills are discussed in tones of reverence by hip-hop cognoscenti, not least Yeezus himself. 

Dilla’s death from a blood disorder at the age of 32 is a shocking moment in the narrative. But the release of his instrumental album Donuts just three days after his death in 2006 sealed Stones Throw's reputation. Today the label is home to musicians of every stripe, from soul singer Mayer Hawthorne to guitar bands like Stepkids. “Most of the things I sign are things that nobody's heard of,” says Peanut Butter Wolf with a smile of pride. “In 30 years I want to find Stones Throw's records either in the $100 bin or the 99 cent bin: I want people to really love it, or really hate it.”—Tom Horan