Madlib sat down with Radio France recently to grant a rare interview at the company’s vinyl record archives. Curating selections of Jazz, Hip Hop and other genres, the producer/emcee spoke to Laura Leishman about his own production background and his relationships with other artists.
“My uncle is John Faddis who came under Dizzy Galespie,” he said, “so I knew Jazz before any type of music. Still learning.” Like Galespie, Madlib’s uncle was a trumpeter and his parents were also musicians.
Commenting on his early entry into the industry in the early 1990s, Madlib described touring with the Los Angeles group Tha Alkaholiks. “This is the first crew I was down with,” he said. “This is the first people I went on tour with. I quit college to be in this crew, came back from the tour broke. That’s how I learned how to drink, hanging out with Tha Alkaholics. I came back broke. I didn’t make any money.”
Madlib, who released a partially new Quasimoto album in 2013, later added his thoughts on J Dilla, a producer he worked with prominently under the shared name Jaylib. “He was the funkiest, just by how he programs loose and not quantized,” he said. “It’s like human feel, and the selections that he chose to sample. Every producer bows down to Dilla whether they like it or not, because everybody took something from him like [jazz artist John] Coltrane. That’s why I call him the ‘Coltrane of Hip Hop.’”
Commenting on the lessons he learned from the late Detroit beatsmith, Lib added he was taught to “just stay loose, keep it raw, and bang your drums out sometimes.”
Madlib added a description of the sampling technique he utilized on the debut album from his Quasimoto alias,The Unseen. In reference to source material from Melvin Van Peebles, a composer and film scorer he sampled prominently on the album, Madlib described sampling directly from films.
“I was sampling the movies,” he said. “Sampled off VHS back in the day, all that. So the actual Quasimoto song I’m sampling off both these, the movies.”
Adding a mention of the relationship between Peebles and himself that the samples spawned, Madlib described a shift in attitude. “He wasn’t cool at first, but he understands.”
In 2005, Madlib and Van Peebles established a record contract for a collaborative album, tentatively titled Brer Soul Meets Quasimoto. It has yet to be completed.
RELATED: Madlib Recalls Crate-Digging With J Dilla Before He Passed Away
LONG LIVE DILLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6DQavhJUrk
In honor of Madlib, lets play Mad-Libs: (Name of random musician) calls (Name of dead musician) the (Name of another dead musician) of (musical genre). I got: B.o.B calls Marvin Gaye the Elvis Presley of Opera. Fun innit?
Weird Al Yankovic calls Amy Winehouse the 2 Pac of Christian Jazz.
Lil B calls Etta James the Kurt Cobain of dubstep
Ringo calls Ol’ Dirty Bastard the Beethoven of glitter rock
Nas calls Isaac Hayes the Freddie Mercury of viking metal.
Papoose calls Lil JoJo the RuPaul of reggaeton (I know RuPaul ain’t dead buttfuck it)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx85UGHHKMw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueocgcXDt-E
sky is full of love thats wats up
but dif type of love haaaa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKDSy75Jgw
much love forever to the one and only james yancey.
i like eating food especially when it tastes good, sometimes i go out and talk to peoople, but usually i watch hey arnold on my palm pilot and write notes to my future self. i never been to six flags but i imagine the berries there taste very sweet. sumtimes when im alone i like to imagine myself donating laptops to libraries.
‘galepsie’ lmao
666
Madlib Tribute Mix (mixed by Mr Lu the Riddler) https://myspace.com/mrlutheriddler/music/song/madlib-tribute-mega-mix-mixed-by-mr-lu-the-riddler-94484354-105186678
I’d say Coltrane is the “J Dilla” of Jazz
And Madlib the Miles Davis of Hip Hop. RIP Dilla.
You’re a fucking moron. Maybe if Miles had died in 1954 that comparison makes sense. Stop suck hip-hop’s mediocre dead balls and learn some goddamn history.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apN0AXjJxQE
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What an asinine fucking statement. There’s ZERO goddamn comparison and it shows you much weed has fried Madlips fucking mind he’s even suggest that.
Dilla was OK, sometimes better, and not in same goddamn universe as Coltrane. MAYBE– maybe– if he’d be as good as, say, Oliver Nelson… who? (Madlib does know, if he can remember.)
But hey, maybe if Gucci Mane dies we can compare him to Rakim and Thelonios Monk next?
Jimmy and Mama Yancey >>>>>> Dilla, look it up or ask Questlove in between his Chinks jokes, fat legged pindicked fuck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbL_ElAh6m8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClF1RM7t0HM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCGNTO0qaVc
left eye trying to work out kinda on her trip. missy elliet work it.
good comparison http://jobnize.com/?task=7134