Madvillain
by Eothen Alapatt, intro by Brian DiGenti
O, remember when the Quasimoto album first dropped? It was hit with more than a fair share of negative criticism. It seems to me like it’s taken a couple years for fans of music to generally acknowledge, “Oh, you know, that was a great record. That was a step in the right direction for rap music.”
Madlib: ’Cause they ain’t used to stuff. They have to get used to it. They’re used to that stuff they hear on…whatever they hear. Our stuff is just different. I guess that’s how I was too, before I got used to certain types of music. I might not have liked jazz—at first. I was young, I don’t know. But you have to get used to things. You’re used to the radio? The radio only plays certain things. Some people hear my music and say, “Damn, I didn’t even know people made music like that!” [So I] try to always do different things every time.
DOOM: Indeed so. I think it is a gradual progression. Even now, the state that this music is in—you say we infuse a lot of different genres [within it], but it would have got here anyway. It just so happens that we were blessed—born at the right time to be able to do it right now. We’re just lucky to be here doing this, if I can speak for you, O.
Madlib: Nah, that’s it exactly. That is true.
Don’t get me wrong. I acknowledge great steps for rap music along the way. There were always concept albums within hip-hop—like De La Soul Is Dead, for instance. Well executed. Near perfect. But it seems to me that what y’all are doing now is in a completely different realm. A totally different approach to making a record. Like with Operation: Doomsday… You became MF DOOM over the course of a few years, and, in that time, recorded a statement which captured that change. I can’t imagine that happening in the early ’90s. The constraints rap musicians felt were different. But shit, you were there—tell me how you feel…
DOOM: I’m like this—I’m trying to top the last ill shit that a motherfucker did, you know? So I’m like, it’s always going to evolve and get iller. De La had De La Soul Is Dead… That shit was ill. Even their first one, Three Feet High… That was real crazy. At the time it was cutting edge shit. If they didn’t do that, it wouldn’t even prompt us—well, I should say prompt me—to try to top that shit. I just try to top it. Whoever had the illest, most visual shit… The people, who, when you listen to their album you can picture what they’re doing, picture the scene, picture the painting. That’s what I try to do. Paint a picture. I just try to keep up with the best of them.
And yourself it would seem. One thing that’s impressive to me—about both of y’all—is that you haven’t worn out your fans’ attentions. You’ve made many albums, in many styles, under many different guises. All great pieces of work—a difficult feat to pull off. Historically, Clarence Reid was successful…
Madlib: Eddie Bo… There were a lot of people.
Yup. Johnny Otis…
Madlib: I just found out that George Duke had [an alias]—Dawilli Gonga. He was on a label, so he had to go under a different name.
Are there any secrets to your success?
Madlib: To keep recording. I guess we just record what we like, so it comes out cool.
DOOM: Mmmm hmmm, come from the heart, stay focused, you know what I mean?
Madlib: I just make music I want to hear.
But how do you avoid overexposure?
Madlib: Always be different. Challenge yourself. Don’t be scared to try new things. Once you get bored, challenge yourself to do something you wouldn’t think you would do. You can always keep what you have…
DOOM:…Yeah, but you can kill it on the next level. It’s endless.
Madlib: But even though you can go further, you have to stay with the essence. There’s just too much music… Hopefully I don’t fizzle out. Fans [can be] finicky. You do something they don’t like, it’s over. So I realize that. But I’m going to still keep challenging myself. I just make music I want to hear. Hopefully other people will like what I do. But that’s all I do. Whatever you hear, that I made, it’s because I wanted to hear that. That’s how I am with all my music, even though I may not think about it.
DOOM: …It’ll never run out. Same thing with the words. Sometimes it’s challenging. With this particular album, Madvillain, I’m like, the way I approached it lyrically is that it was spontaneous. You were here, E, I was sitting right here. I’d just heard the beat—a’ight, bow!
Madlib: Beats were spontaneous too. Freestyle beats. Whatever.
DOOM: Captured in there. You can feel it, in the music.
Some of the beats that ended up on the project—like the beat that became “Strange Ways” for instance—were made in your hotel room while we were in Sao Paulo in 2003, O. Using the 303 to sample from a portable turntable and mastering to a cassette deck.
Madlib: Every beat on the project was made on the 303.
So let me clarify. When you say “beats were spontaneous,” you mean: pick up a record—with no rhyme or reason behind your choice—sample a sound, move on, forget about the source, repeat?
Madlib: Yeah. That’s why a lot of the beats on 100 Beats [Madlib's two beat CDs, from which the majority of the Madvillain album was culled], you can’t use, ’cause I’m just fucking around and freestyling. Some of ’em might be so way out, ’cause I’m just using what I have [in front of me]. Whatever. I don’t remember the samples I use. Hell no.
