Rhinestone Cowboy picks up the pieces though and is a worthy finisher. Unfortunately we now run into Great Day, by far the weakest track on the album. Supervillain is a brilliant little instrumental piece which builds tension before leading into All Caps, a very strong track based around a piping sample. Rainbows immediately demands attention with its aggressivly blaring trumpets and Doom messes around with his delivery, more crooning than rapping.įancy Clown rivals Accordion for the strongest track on the record, thanks to the lammenting falsetto of Viktor Vaug, which weaves its way around the gentle piano, a multitude of samples and Doom's strong lyrical and vocal delivery. Doom's lyrics are more focussed here extolling the virtues of weed with a great sense of humour, ' Doom nominated for the best rolled L's / And they wondered how he dealt with stress so well / Wild guess? You could say he stay sedated.' Despite the ecclectism the album has a strong sense of stylistic unity.īistro, closing at just over a minute is a great example of this - a great track, it combines a strong bassline, twinkling pianos and background female humming but would be in danger of becoming repetitive if it ran for too long.Īmerica's Most Blunted is the second longest track on the record and its bouncy production does indeed outstay its welcome by a small margin.

The soundscape is constantly evolving and it allows Madlib to be very explorative in his production. In his trademark abstract way, he conveys a quite simple message: always remember it’s MF DOOM, not MF Doom. One of the album's strengths is the brevity of the songs with the majority under two minutes. Perhaps the easiest accessible track on the monumental Madvillainy album and therefore the best suited to pick as an individual song to show the epicness of DOOM’s and Madlib’s classic collaboration. The lyrics, like most songs on the album, are a little rambling and hard to follow but he delivers some nice lines, 'Slip like freudian / Your first and last step to playing yourself like an accordion.' Doom's low key and slightly slurred voice complements perfectly with this.

The swirling accordion sample is the backbone for this success, with the beat keeping rhythm but staying firmly in the background. This segues into Accordion, the first and one of the greatest tracks on the album. When producer Madlib and rapper MF DOOM decided to craft an album together under the name Madvillain in 2004, it only seemed natural to title it Madvillainy. The Illest Villains sets the tone nicely, introducing the concept whilst remaining fun to listen to with Madlib's quirky samples. GOATed albums: Madvillainy (rap) Kelly Rappaport, Oct. It is also a great example of an album built around a theme, but never lagged down by it's concept. Madvillainy’s closer and longest track, Rhinestone Cowboy is peppered with applause and crowd sounds, as if DOOM is performing an encore at the end of the album. Madvillain, the duo of rapper MF Doom and producer Madlib has only given us one album, but to my mind Madvillainy is one of the modern classics of hip hop.

Madvillainy album songs