CD Reviews

MF Doom & Madlib | Madvillainy 2

Stones Throw (2008)

By GUSTAVO TURNER | October 15, 2008

3.5 Stars

Piers Plowman was the life work of a crazy, brilliant dude in the late 14th century, a sprawling poem that he kept revising to the point where no two manuscripts are 100 percent alike (this was right before the printing press), and scholars think there are at least three different “official versions” they call A, B, and C. Which brings us to Madvillainy 2, not the much expected follow-up to the groundbreaking Madlib + Doom 2004 collaboration but a radical remix of the original album — “Madvillainy, the B version,” if you will. This 2008 joint gives a further twist to their usual pop-culture bricolage, a headphone party where Father Guido Sarducci dances to Charo’s cuchi-cuchi and Judy Jetson is far gone in a parallel space of throbbing jazz flutes drawn by Jack “King” Kirby. Word from the label is that this was a homebrewed mix Madlib threw together for a long trip to Tokyo; if so, American Airlines should consider giving the producer his own in-flight channel. Stones Throw follows in the experimental commerce footsteps of Radiohead and Eno/Byrne by offering it as an exclusive download and also as a pricy LP-sized box with all kinds of swag inside including (WTF?) the return of the lowly and generally unloved cassette tape. It can also be found, as you’d expect, all over the gray-area blogs in different leaks and incarnations — just like those unruly mediæval manuscripts.

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Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, More

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