In mid-’90s Brooklyn, while Notorious B.I.G. and Nas were melding gritty street stories and stripped-bare ’70s soul, Spectre was doing his own thing, creating an underworld of dank, dubby beats and supernatural villains that sounded like nothing else out there. Spectre — the nom de hip hop of music writer Skiz Fernando — scaled up that world when he created the Wordsound label, collaborating with like-minded producers on a DIY venture that continues to this day. Now, Fernando lives in Baltimore, and he’s as focused on being a chef, cookbook author, and video producer as he is on making hip hop. But he’s not sleeping, either — his new record, The Last Shall Be First, stands up next to his earliest work as an adventurous, blurry-eyed window on Fernando’s distinctively dystopian worldview.

This exclusive mix was created by Fernando for dublab and explores his career from his early days as an “illbient” trailblazer through mid-career highlights off 2010’s Death Before Dying and 2012’s The True & Living to brand-new, previously unreleased work. We also caught up with Fernando to discuss his new work, his views on the world’s hidden truths, and the various intersections of food and music.