Madlib is releasing 18 albums this year. Maybe 19. Maybe more. No one really knows. Not me. Not Egon or Peanut Butter Wolf. Not Madlib himself. We know that there are a dozen Beat Konducta albums surveying Otis Jackson’s far-flung tastes. Reggae and Afro-Beat. Tropicalia and New Wave. Actual rap music for those down since the Lootpack era. Somewhere in the mix, there is the O.J. Simpson collabo with Guilty Simpson, the Stoney Jackson LP, another Quasimoto album, Madvillain 2, Madlib and the Young Jazz Rebels and his other jazz side project The Last Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble. Monk Hughes, that withered and venerable jazz man, may make an appearance too, but he may not. Chances are you and I have given it more thought than Madlib. He doesn’t worry about these things. He’s too busy working.
Last month, I took a trip to the Bomb Shelter. There may have been blunts bandied about. There may not have been. For about the last two weeks, I’ve been wanting to shout “I Was There!” like it was the first Can show in Cologne, but in the interest of cannibalization, I’ll keep it cryptic. The story is forthcoming, when I’m capable of finding the time and rubber cement to piece together the fragments. In the interim, a few tracks from the Beat Konducta’s latest African sojourn have been unleashed to the world. Listening to them removed from the finished project is sort of like eating lox without a bagel or cream cheese. Still pretty good, but clearly incomplete and prone to make you feel salty. Volume 3 of the Medicine Show drops on March 23 and you can pre-order and stream a few tracks at the Stones Throw website, which ought to have a Madlib almanac to keep track of his movements. All lame stereotypes about lazy stoners are clearly obsolete.
Download:
MP3: Madlib – “The Frontline (Liberation)”
MP3: Madlib – “African Voodoo Queen (Drama)”
MP3: Guilty Simpson (prod. by Madlib) – “Before the Verdict”
