Billboard staff picked the 50 greatest producers of this century: the most innovative, impactful and important knob-twiddlers since 2000. The top 5 are:

5. Mike Will Made-It because he loves twisting the familiar into something far weirder and more rewarding

4. The-Dream & Tricky Stewart thanks to their zooming keys, gentle-but-insistent percussion, expansive soundscapes and the era's most lethal toplines.

3. Timbaland - fourth-dimension funk, with rattling drums, squelching bass, unrecognizable and disembodied vocal hooks

2. Pharrell Williams / The Neptunes - Liquid guitars, clanging percussion, and the most intoxicating synth tones you've ever heard

1. Max Martin -  the hooks we crave, the choruses we want to belt out, from the stars that have defined the mainstream over the past two decades

Pitchfork recommends eight recent releases that "show the guitar’s boundless potential". Among the selected ones there are: new album by Brooklyn’s Rachika Nayar who "uses her electric guitar to make quiet, visionary ambient music"; Rob Noyes is a 12-string guitarist based in Japan. whos music "enters the room like a strong gust of wind and resonates long after"; Chris Schlarb & Chad Taylor offer "droning 12-string ragas, gentle folk melodies, and quietly psychedelic mood pieces that transport listeners to a higher plane of thinking" on their collaborative album.