The New Yorker's excellent S F-J ponders the enigma called Madvillain:

"Most of Madlib’s beats are made from samples of records, though it is hard to say which ones, even in a general way. Is the lovely, decaying piano figure in 'All Caps' from a jazz record? An English skiffle record? A documentary about whales? 'America’s Most Blunted' begins with a sample of Steve Reich’s 'Come Out,' and then stumbles into a swaggering funk pattern. The three instrumental tracks are some of the album’s best moments, brief as they are: 'Do Not Fire!' could be the theme of a Cuban kung-fu movie, and 'Supervillain Theme' sounds like the work of an accomplished rock band from a country that the United States does not maintain diplomatic relations with.

After a few repetitions, a sample becomes known but doesn’t necessarily stop being strange. The imperfections in whatever is being sampled are retained, the stresses and flaws and cracks. There is a tactile quality to 'Madvillainy,' which leads us to the smoking gun of the record, if there is one: marijuana. There are repeated allusions to weed and several samples of a 1971 record called 'A Child’s Garden of Grass: A Pre-Legalization Comedy.' The key sample: 'In fact, everyone finds that they’re more creative stoned than straight.'

For most of us, this is poppycock, but Doom and Madlib succeed in translating the heightened physical sensitivity and associative facility of the stoned mind into concrete sound. Madlib, especially, seems able to hide music inside other music. His samples lie on each other like double exposures, or like a cassette tape that allows the previous recording to bleed through the new one."
- posted by cjb @ 10:03 PM