SFGATE: You released a rap album early in your career, do you have a favorite Bay Area rapper? Ali: Well, I love Hieroglyphics in general. They were so inspiring to so many of us. Lyrically and with their production, they were on par with anybody in New York at the time.

I was wearing out "The Infamous." I was wearing that album out.

Frank Ocean’s new album. It’s very different from his last one. It’s a little melancholy, but it’s one of those albums that I can play all day. What I like about Frank Ocean—and a few of those kind of artists, there aren’t enough of them—is that they are really unique and make music and art on their own terms.

My first moment where I felt like I couldn’t live without this music [laughs] was when I heard Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s “The Show” on the radio station in the Bay Area and I’m twelve years old. I sat by the radio station the whole weekend changing the dial from different radio stations to see if they would play “The Show.” I felt like my head was going to explode. I love hip hop.

I just love what Nicholas Britell did with Moonlight. Honestly, I would never pick something I'm involved in like this, but hearing pieces of that music, out of context even, or watching the film, it just brings up so much for me. I know it's a cheat, because I know some of the things that went into the sounds: In the music, they used two characters' hands slapping together as percussion in the score. No one would ever know that. They drew from classical music and slowed it down in order to define more of the angst in the sound and draw a deeper emotional reaction from the audience. It's such a nice mix of classical and hip-hop—a very specific kind of hip-hop—and then all the other sound elements and nuances that help make our story what it is.

This is all music that has a little vibe to it, that I feel has flow.

This is all music that has a little vibe to it, that I feel has flow.

Fall in Love by Slum Village.

Fink has a new album that is out now.

Erykah Badu of course

Karriem Riggins - Bahia Dreamin'

Hiatus Kayote - Nakamarra...

Kool and the Gang - Summer Madness , which we all know from Will Smith.

I've been listening to a lot of instrumental music right now, so there is a producer in LA, his name is Knxwledge. He has a wonderful song called Time & Tide

One of my favorite Jay-Z songs that I always go back to was Allure