Madvillainy

Madvillain | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 23, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Stones Throw
• ASIN: B00018Y0QQ
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (136 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,672 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Conflicted Review, September 21, 2006

By 

Brian Seiler (Tomball, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Madvillainy (Audio CD)

In art, sometimes things get produced that are strange and influential, considered within the scope of their origin (Van Gogh, for example), and sometimes things get created that are strange for no good reason and we can only hope aren't influential at all (e.e. cummings). There's no question that Madvillainy is not a "normal" hip hop record. The question is whether that's okay.

For some people, I figure it will probably work out. For others, it won't. It's really that simple.

To address the common complaints, all of which have some validity:

1. The tracks tend to be short. Well, that's not quite true--the tracks, as divided by the album listing--are on the short side of average. The thing is that many of those tracks are almost divisible into sub-tracks, with the end result being that most of the vocal snippets (the actual rapping) don't last for more than about a minute at a time.

2. DOOM doesn't take himself seriously. I honestly don't know what to tell you about that. I think people that are faulting him for his subject matter have a stick somewhere uncomfortable they need to remove. Popular music, like any mass artistic medium, is supposed to be entertaining. It doesn't necessarily have to make sense to be fun, though that's not really a problem that DOOM has (his stuff frequently makes sense--at least, it does to me, though the fact that my perusal of lyrics at a couple of sites suggested that a number of listeners don't know who Worf is tells me I may be coming from a little bit different area of subject expertise).

2.5. Some people think there are too many skits. I classify this is a non-observation or a sub-complaint for several reasons. First off, if you think that THIS has too many "skits" (not sure what that means, at this point), you should stay far away from some of DOOM's other releases. More likely, this relates to a general feeling that the record doesn't form a cohesive artistic statement, but feels more like somebody swept up a bunch of fragments from a cutting room floor and glued them together.

The fact is, those objections are correct. You can't take DOOM seriously all the time, and if you'll do him the charity, you'll find that he's got a lot more wit to him than almost any other MC I can think of off the top of my head. The album is exceedingly fragmented, mostly in response to the frankly monotonous and overwrought state of mainstream hip hop, if you are to believe the press. There's probably a better compromise between six minutes of the same beat in a loop and a blender full of strange beats, but that doesn't necessarily imply this is bad.

Taken on its own, this is, at the least, an interesting record. I'd consider it one of the better hip hop recordings of the past five years (and no, I'm not concerned with being considered "down with the underground"). It's very different, has some great rhymes, and never stays in one place long enough to get boring, which is by far the greatest crime other hip hop commits these days.

My only real problem with Madvillainy is the fact that it puts me to sleep. And I mean that literally. If I put it on in my car on the way home, I'm drifting off by the time I hit my freeway exit. Some of that is due to homogeneity of tempo (oddly enough, even though the beat changes a LOT, it tends to gravitate back towards a few checkpoint tempos, and the frequent transition actually emphasizes that more to me than it downplays it), and some of it is admittedly due to the fact that the constant motion in the record sort of encourages you to tune it into background noise.

Ultimately, I can't recommend this album as a starting point for anybody. It's just not very accessible. We're not talking about Radiohead here (I doubt that there will be any fistfights in bars about whether or not this record is the grand statement of everything that sums up my entire life and makes me feel like some odd British git really understands what I'm going through and the utter and complete helplessness and ennui that comes from our existence in a world pervasively permeated by technology and information--and don't laugh too hard, because I'm pretty sure that at least two people have used those exact words in that same order before me, here, and, if you can't tell, I don't have much respect for that particular breed of Radiohead fan), but this isn't the sort of thing that you're going to pick up and fall directly into.

If you're a serious hip hop enthusiast, you should have this record. Whether you like it or not, this is an IMPORTANT record, if only because it attempts to do something completely different from mainstream hip hop and succeeds. If you're a casual listener, it would be ideal if you could get your hands on it before you buy and listen to it a time or two to see if it grows on you. If you're a DOOM or Madlib fan, you already have the record and I'm not sure what you're reading for.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the best albums i've ever heard, December 10, 2004

By 

El Duque (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Madvillainy (Audio CD)

I don't write a lot of reviews, but I had to add in my two cents about this album. I have barely heard of Madlib and MF Doom before I picked up this album. It is one of the best albums I have ever heard. i have purchased around 20 or 30 hip hop albums in the last couple months to make up for a few years of laziness, as well as listening to new artists. Madvillainy gets the most rotation. The production is amazing, and Doom's voice fits like a puzzle over madlib's beats.

I must say when i first listened to this cd, i didnt give it too much thought. It wasn't until the second listen when I became amazed. My fav tracks are accordian, figaro, strange ways, fancy clow, and rhinestone cowboy. I also heard a sweet remix of figaro that I think is on the 12". Don't sleep on this album, you'll be sorry.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SO THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE!!!, March 31, 2004

By 

Adam P Boots (Valley Village, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Madvillainy (Audio CD)

Alright... I'm not strictly a MF Doom (or Victor Vaughn, King Geeordah, KMD, Zeb Lova X, or whatever moniker he's using now) fan, or a Madlib (or Yesterdays New Quintet, Quasimoto, Otis Jackson Jr. or whatever moniker HE'S using now) fan, but I like good hip hop, and this is just that.

First of all... The beats... Extremely typical Madlib production, with what sounds like TONS of really short samples jumbled together to make a great beat, in a way that only Madlib does... Additionally, this is LITTERED with what sounds like old radio programs as skits and interludes. I say LITTERED, but I don't mean this negatively. Most or many of the skits/intros are HILARIOUS, and I'm under the impression that Doom must have been digging in the crates for MONTHS or YEARS trying to find all the old radio talk for the interludes (the production credits say that Doom handled all the skits... I may be wrong on this...) (America's Most Blunted has my favorite production work, but I kind of feel the song is ruined a bit by a Quasimoto/Madlib "duet" at the end... I guess this is just because I don't like the "Quasimoto" character that Madlib created and would rather he just rap normal...).

Doom comes through with the rhymes nicely. In Fact, I'm much more impressed with his work on this album than Madlib's, though I think that Madlib did a fantastic job of handling the beats. It's probably because I've just come to expect it out of Madlib, but I don't have as much of a history when it comes to Doom's work.

So far, this is one of my favorite CONCEPT hip hop albums ever, on par with Dr. Octogonecologist and Deltron 3030 (and from what I hear, lots of the MF Doom albums, or even the first Prince Paul album but I don't own any of them, and can't make that comparison...)

The other thing about this album is that it sounds the way you'd have expected Jaylib to sound if you knew anything about Madlib. The problem with Jaylib was that NEITHER MADLIB OR JAY DILLA is HALF the MC that MF Doom(aka just about every name you can think of) is, and it made the album into a well produced record by a crappy rapper tandem. THIS ALBUM is anything but that... It's well produced, well rapped on, and... just a great album... If you know anything about Madlib or Doom, you'll like this album... if you Don't, you still should like it, as it's the way Hip hop was intended... raw, gritty, intelligent, and here to stay.