How 'Bridges to Babylon' brought hip-hop and trip-hop into the Rolling Stones' sound

The Rolling Stones were 33-year veterans in 1997 and instead of coasting, they went looking for modern production tricks. They brought in the Dust Brothers—the L.A. duo famous for Beck’s Odelay and the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique—to co-produce alongside their trusted Don Was. It was a deliberate move to inject hip-hop loops, trip-hop beats, and digital editing into a band that had always been about analog swagger.

The Dust Brothers’ fingerprints are all over tracks like “Anybody Seen My Baby?” which samples k.d. lang’s voice and loops it into a lazy groove, and “Saint of Me,” which rides a trip-hop drum machine pattern that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Portishead record. Meanwhile, Don Was kept the sessions grounded, making sure the Stones’ signature riffs and Keith Richards’ open-G tunings didn’t get buried under the