It isn’t an easy feat, but Dumile and Jackson manage to pull it off by allowing their complementary - though oftentimes contradictory - creative processes to work naturally off one another. Somehow, though, all of the narrative trickery and sonic juxtapositions eloquently create a self-contained empire where all of these various identities can exist in harmony. But then there are songs like “Shadows of Tomorrow,” which sounds like an apocalyptic dirge made by an alien race.Īlthough the album is credited to MF Doom and Madlib, Quasimoto and Dumile’s pseudo-suave Victor Vaughn make appearances as they’re needed. At times, the album sounds older than the old school, as in the exceptional “Accordion,” featuring an accordion sample that wobbles somewhere beneath MF Doom’s gravelly voice, which recalls the Delta blues as much as it does today’s rappers. While the convergence of these two brands of schizophrenia on the just-released Madvillainy would seem to run the risk of being complete abstract pretense - or just simply overcrowded - the album creates a distinctly unique universe, one that resurrects and remolds 40 years of pop culture into a landscape where identity is fluid and time is out of joint. Whether jamming with Yesterday’s New Quintet - a jazz “band” made up entirely of Jackson’s aliases - or playing the part of Quasimoto, a helium-voiced hedonist whose primary occupation is smoking herb and “astro traveling,” Jackson occupies a world where he exists amongst his various incarnations, a b-boy Brahma with a blunt dangling from each lip.

best known for his work as Madlib - splits his personality into an ever-expanding cast in order to encompass his various moods, talents, and ideas. If Dumile leaps into different characters, constantly abandoning one identity for another, veiling any individual essence in favor of anonymity, then Los Angeles MC/producer/DJ Otis Jackson Jr. In every press photo, on each of his album covers, and at his infrequent concerts, Dumile wears a thick metal mask that obscures his face, leaving him austere and enigmatic. Although I’ve almost religiously followed Dumile’s career as he has morphed into different personas - from black radical to postmodern “super villain,” then to alien invader, and on to rogue ladies’ man - I haven’t seen a picture of him in nearly a decade. Sitting across from me at the Ramada Inn bar on Ninth and Market, the legendary MC Daniel Dumile - aka Zevlove X, or MF Doom, or King Geedorah, or Victor Vaughn - looks like a complete stranger. Two guys, their two dozen personalities, and Madvillainy, an instant contender for hip hop album of the year.

Madvillainy album genius