MIKE DEAN used his time in lockdown as an opportunity to experiment with his craft. “I have so much music that it’s kind of mind-bending,” DEAN tells Apple Music. “I did like 20 livestreams, so that’s 20 hours of music there—plus another 15 hours of music. I’ll try to use it for film scores.” The veteran producer and multi-instrumentalist dug into his extensive collection of hardware synthesizers for his 2020 project 4:20, on which he created a hypnotic 90-minute piece centered around ambient and space music. It was a welcome change of pace for DEAN, whose 40-year-plus career includes working with high-profile artists such as Beyoncé, Travis Scott, and Scarface—all of whom are represented here in this exclusive Apple Music playlist he curated himself. But the artist most prominently featured here is Kanye West, whom he fondly recalls meeting shortly after working on Scarface’s 2002 album The Fix. “After that came out, I think Kanye had heard the ‘Guess Who's Back’ mix,” he says. “He was just like, 'Who mixed this shit?' His people directed Kanye down to Houston, and that’s when he came down for the first time. The rest is history.”