jackson's initial role was to provide the score for trevor's missions, and he took influence from artists such as the mars volta and queens of the stone age. when he learnt that the team would be building off each other's work, he voiced concern that the finished product could be disjointed. after sharing his work with the team, however, he was particularly impressed by froese's contributions. "edgar evolved the music, made it into a whole other thing", jackson said. froese had interpolated funk sounds with jackson's hip-hop influences. froese and jackson then sent their work between the alchemist and oh no, who heavily sampled it. the alchemist opined, "we were sampling, taking a piece form here, a piece from there ... we pitched stuff up, chopped it, tweaked it. then we chose the tracks that worked and everyone came in and layered on that". dj shadow then mixed the team's creations and matched it to the gameplay. pavlovich considered "how to make the hip-hop and rock score not sound like they were instrumentals of songs on the radio, but rather something unique to the score" a challenge.