Madvillain
Madvillainy
[Stones Throw; 2004]
Rating: 9.4
Madvillainy, one of the most anticipated releases in underground rap history, happens to parallel
one of the most anticipated arrivals in comic book history: the short-lived Amalgam Comics label. As the
name implied, the Amalgam Universe brought together the two most dominant and popular comic factions--
Marvel and DC-- and all of their respective characters, styles and quirks. The long-awaited collaboration
between producer/emcees Madlib and MF Doom, Madvillainy is the Infinity Gauntlet of rap, a
tense mainstream-meets-indie, avant-meets-antique melee that, as the opening sample suggests, plays on a
"seminal connection that audiences can relate their experience in life with the villains and their dastardly
doings."
"MADVILLAIN: RETARDED HARD COPY"
In November 2002, Otis Jackson, Jr. (aka Madlib) went south to Brazil on business. For the trip, he compiled
two mix CDs of beats and unfinished tracks: one stored his collaborations with Detroit's Jay Dee; the second
held work with Brooklyn's Daniel Dumile (aka MF Doom). As a true testament to both fidelity's fragility and
the power of file-sharing, both discs leaked a few months later, giving birth to a logical buzz, but more
importantly, heightening expectations to impossible heights; these demos were pretty fucking tight. If
"Peeyano Keys" and "Powerball #5" were just rough drafts, what could be expected of the completed project?
Undoubtedly, Madlib and Doom felt the pressure. The leak seemed to be a huge kick in the ass, especially
for Madlib, who in the past few years has been garnering the reputation of being brilliant and prolific,
but distracted: His Blunted in the Bomb Shelter mix (rumored to have been concocted in less than a
day), Blue Note-sampling Shades of Blue, and even the Jaylib collaboration are fresh, but sloppy and
often unfocused. Madvillainy is anything but: The samples are smart and never played-out, and the
production and rhymes reveal a determined sense of cooperation, as Doom spouts off his most brilliant lyrical
change-ups and production-conscious playoffs.
"Wild guess, you can say he stay sedated."
One of the noticeable differences between the unauthorized promo and the final burn of the album is a change
in vocal tone from Doom, which has shifting from an excited, measured performance to a slower, scratchier
and ultimately better-suited delivery, considering Madlib's low-key, bass-oriented production. Some people
take the new chilled delivery as somehow inferior to the old incarnation, but taken in context, the album
benefits from the re-recording, particularly in cases were Doom re-arranges couplets to optimize his punchlines
("Meat Grinder") or adds new lines altogether ("Figaro").
"Your first and last step to playing yourself like accordion."
Doom's acknowledgement of Madlib's accordion sample (the same one Daedelus used on 2002's Invention)
is the most obvious instance of Madvillainy's lyrics/production integrity, but the album is chock
full of them. For a collaboration which the duo has described as something "like a telepathy thing. There
wasn't a lot of talking," Madlib and Doom, proponents of two distinctive hip-hop styles, are of one unusually
strong mind.
"Mad plays the bass like the race card."
The axis of Madvillainy is Otis Jackson Jr.'s production. While Doom's entire career has been
shadowed by consistently strong production efforts, never has such chemistry developed between him and
another beatmaker. From the unbelievable Castlevania-meets-Rocky & Bullwinkle piano chase
music of "Supervillain Theme" to the shifting keyboard jazz suite of "Great Day" to the dark chamber bass,
timbales and jump-cut ukulele plucks of "Meat Grinder", Madlib proves himself as much more than just a loop
digger, topping his best work on Quasimoto's The Unseen with an album of consistently incredible
beat work. And it isn't just the beats that make the partnership work so well: The character of his vocal
samples and the smoothness of his song-to-song segues make this album individual to the styles of both
artists-- a difference that puts this pairing far ahead of similarly talented teams like Rjd2 and Blueprint's
Soul Position.
"Don't make me have to pound his tin crown face in."
Both Doom's and Madlib's myriad aliases make sparkling cameo appearances on Madvillainy, most notably
on "America's Most Blunted", in which Madlib bickers with alter-ego Quasimoto, and on "Fancy Clown", which
features Dumile as Viktor Vaughn. Here, Vaughn steams on an ex-girlfriend's unfaithfulness-- but she's
cheating with Metalface, another Dumile alias. It's a brilliant conceit, and perhaps makes "Fancy Clown"
hip-hop's first schizophrenic self-diss track.
"Hey you: Don't touch the mic like it's AIDS on it."
Okay, so maybe that's a little harsh. Although the guest appearances from the Stones Throw massive are
Jackson Jr.'s take on label-based self-aggrandizement, they never disrupt the album's flow, and never say
anything too stupid (Medaphoar even garners a laugh on "Raid" with, "My niggas take 'no' like Kobe"). Still,
it helps that these extraneous verses are few and far between; most listeners would likely have preferred
an additional Doom cut instead, or at least an appearance from Doom's Monsta Island Czars.
"Spit so many verses, sometimes my jaw twitches/ One thing this party could use is more... booze."
When much of the underground often aspires to Truth and Something Bigger, Madlib and Doom have always seemed
content to be quirky through and through, lightly roasting themselves and subverting the genre itself to
brilliant effect. Like in the above quote from "Great Day": The rhyme's pattern and rap's topical stereotype
demands the word "bitches," yet Doom hilariously says "booze" instead. Or on "Money Folder", in which Doom
starts off, "Don't mind me, I won't just rhyme lightly off of two or three Heinies," but flips beers to
babes midway: "And boy was they fine, G: One black, one Spanish, one Chi-nee."
"The best emcee with no chain ya ever heard."
Madvillainy is inexhaustibly brilliant, with layer-upon-layer of carefully considered yet immediate
hip-hop, forward-thinking but always close to its roots. Madlib and Doom are individually at their most
refined here, and together, they've created one of the most exciting blockbuster alliances in the underground
to date. Good luck finding a better hip-hop album this year, mainstream, undie, or otherwise.
-Rollie Pemberton & Nick Sylvester, March 25th, 2004
