365. Madvillain, "Madvillainy"

 


Somehow I whiffed on this completely when it came out, which I will ascribe to some combination of 2004 being an insane year for me (separating from my wife, moving, dating again, drinking too much, other assorted activities) and my lack of any strong interest in hip hop at the time.  I'm glad to discover this now.  I did have a few MF Doom songs on my iPod, but nothing from this album, so I'd heard of him, but I've only learned about Madlib, who collaborated with him on this album, in the past couple of years.

This album is insane.  You combine Madlib, who's known for his wild and inventive beats, with Doom, who's known for his, well, wild and inventive rhymes, and it's definitely going to be a trip.  Doom, who sadly passed away earlier this year, shapes his lyrics and rhymes like no other rapper I've ever heard.  Check this out, from "Figaro":

The rest is empty with no brain, but the clever nerd
The best MC with no chain ya ever heard
Take it from the TEC-9 holder
They've bit but don't know their neck shine from Shinola
Everything that glitters ain't fishscale
Lemme think, don't let her faint get Ishmael
A shot of Jack got her back it's not an act stack
Forgot about the cackalack, holla back; clack-clack, blocka
Villainy, feel him in ya heart chakra, chart-toppa
Start-shit stoppa, be a smart shoppa

Whoa, the internal rhymes, the doubling back, the crazy imagery.  Just wild.  And it's not just Doom's rapping.  The beats really are incredible, with Madlib stitching together drums, bits of old songs, snippets of what sound like instructional films, all into a dizzying whole.

Kinda nuts, no?  I was impressed by how Doom wrote to Madlib's beats: "Otis [Madlib] would be giving me beat tapes and beat CDs, be having like 50 beats on there. Some of them is two minutes long, some of them is one minute long, but there would be a bunch of them on there. One out of four, on average, would stand out to me.  As quick as I was coming up with ideas, he would have more music for me to listen to. As I’m doing the writing, he’s in the other room finishing up more instrumentals. By the time I come up with a couple more songs, I’m like, 'Yo, you got another CD?' He got a fresh one, hot off the presses, with another fifty joints. I listen to another 50 beats. It would probably take me over the course of two or three days. Just listening to the 50, back and forth and feeling it out, and then, pow! By then, I got another four joints. Four or five joints off the next 50. So every 50 beats he give me I got five joints."

So this is the distillation of, what, like 1000 possible songs.  Wowza.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500?  Yeah, I would think so.

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