September 2 street date. In the Beginning (Vol. 2) continues the treasure trove of the early works of Declaime & Madlib, the longtime collaborators who helped usher in a new sound and style from the city of Oxnard, Calif. This collection is brimming with previously unheard tracks from this beyond-creative duo that blends hip-hop with funk, jazz, soul, and psychedelia to lay the groundwork for so many other emcees and producers. For Declaime (a/k/a Dudley Perkins), this series serves as a way to honor his friends and the city that raised them. He shouts out names like The Almighty Metaphor (aka MED), Oh No the Disrupt, DJ Romes, Kazi, and more, who he says “created a lane for the city of Oxnard to get the recognition it deserves.” Some of them make an appearance in one form or another on this collection, too—Romes, for example, mastered the project—that compiles 10 previously lost tracks that were recorded from 1993 to ‘96. In The Beginning (Vol. 2) is entirely produced by Madlib, who provided all the cuts as well. His instrumentals are on that raw and dusty vibe as they move freely through genres and sounds, like on standout cuts “Bandwagon,”WLIX,” and “Signs (feat. Wildchild).” Those are all highlights for Declaime, too, and they demonstrate his ability to blend his observations of the world with bravado and third-eye insights. Even as young kids just getting their feet wet in the studio, these two were firmly on their path.
March 18 street date. "Blackmarket Seminar" is an album by Kazi and entirely produced by Madlib. Guest features by Madlib, MED, Wild-child, Declaime (Dudley Perkins), and Oh No. The album was recorded in 1996 and remastered in 2021 for this reissue.
January 29 street date. Talk of LIBERATION began to circulate around the industry after Kweli posted a short but significant blog about it on his Myspace page back in September of 2006 along with the first release from the album, "Funny Money". Since then, Kweli and Madlib fans flooded messageboards and blog pages, anxious for the impending release. With both halves known to have been members of some of the best collaborations in hip hop, the expectations for this project were, in effect, set far above the bar. The cohesion of Kweli’s sharp, quick spitting lyrics and Madlib’s progressive beat production made for a much sought after product.
July 7 street date. Shades Of Blue is a unique project that turns over the legacy of the esteemed Blue Note jazz label to one of hip-hop's most unique artists, Madlib. He is considered to be one of hip-hop's most inventive visionaries and connects it's productions through smart lyrics and poetics. The album opens with the declaration that "We are now having a little cooking session for Blue Note right here on the scene..." Madlib was afforded the opportunity to mine the crates of Blue Note. On Shades of Blue, he delivers remixes and brand spanking new interpretations of Blue Note classics. Whether funking out Ronnie Foster's original "Mystic Brew" and transforming it into the "Mystic Bounce," or giving Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" a go with Yesterday's New Quintet, rest assured that Madlib's innovative sonic vocabulary will fill the ears. Other artists receiving a Madlib reimagination include Donald Byrd, Bobbi Humphrey, Bobby Hutcherson, Horace Silver, The Three Sounds and many more. Pitchfork album reviewer Scott Hreha rates the album 8.6 "Listening to Madlib's music, I'm reminded of the Black radical maestros responsible for some of the outermost-limits music-making of the past half-century: Sun Ra, George Clinton, Lee 'Scratch' Perry". In 2014, it ranked at number 11 on Paste's "12 Classic Hip-Hop Albums That Deserve More Attention" list. 180 gram audiophile vinyl. Interpretations and Remixes of Blue Note Classics "The Look Of Slim", "Distant Land", "Stormy", live performance of "Peace/Dolphin Dance" and many more tracks. First pressing of 1.000 numbered copies on Blue and White mixed vinyl.
September 17 street date. AJ & the Jiggawatts deliver another crispy-fried slab of southern funk and soul. It's been about 4 years since their last offering, an exercise in heaviness in the way of a 7" on Colemine Records. Now, the crew returns with a new slice of soul on guitarist Andrew Muller's brand new raw-funk boutique label, Money Mouse Records. "Karma Is a Bitch" is the rough and tough deep funk side we've been waiting for. Signature sly funk vibes trade licks with a sense of existential dread, all while staying incredibly danceable. AJ's gruff, whiskey burnt vocal performance gives the track the push it needs to go over the edge into mind-meltingly funky territory. "Wrong Step" is another hype/uptempo dance floor killer complete with call and response breakdown. There's some crazy sonic manipulation happening here on top of the always solid rhythm section. Breakneck speed guitar chucking meets percussive horn blasts. It's a groove that borders on anarchy, and it comes at you fast.
December 10 street date. Now available on cassette. Gil Evans to Miles Davis.... Holger Czukay to the ensemble known as Can....Jean Claude Vannier to Serge Gainsbourg on "Histoire de Melody Nelson". That's the only way to explain the specificity of Four Tet and Madlib's collaboration, in this special album that showcases a two-decade long friendship that has resulted in an album that follows Madlib's classics like Quasimoto's "The Unseen", "Madvillainy" and his "Pinata" and "Bandana" albums with Freddie Gibbs. "A few months ago I completed work on an album with my friend Madlib that we'd been making for the last few years. He is always making loads of music in all sorts of styles and I was listening to some of his new beats and studio sessions when I had the idea that it would be great to hear some of these ideas made into a Madlib solo album. Not made into beats for vocalists to use but instead arranged into tracks that could all flow together in an album designed to be listened to start to finish. I put this concept to him when we were hanging out eating some nice food one day and we decided to work on this together with him sending me tracks, loops, ideas and experiments that I would arrange, edit, manipulate and combine. I was sent hundreds of pieces of music over a couple of years stretch and during that time I put together this album with all the parts that fitted with my vision" - Kieren Hebden aka Four Tet.
December 10 street date. Now available on cassette. Gil Evans to Miles Davis.... Holger Czukay to the ensemble known as Can....Jean Claude Vannier to Serge Gainsbourg on "Histoire de Melody Nelson". That's the only way to explain the specificity of Four Tet and Madlib's collaboration, in this special album that showcases a two-decade long friendship that has resulted in an album that follows Madlib's classics like Quasimoto's "The Unseen", "Madvillainy" and his "Pinata" and "Bandana" albums with Freddie Gibbs. "A few months ago I completed work on an album with my friend Madlib that we'd been making for the last few years. He is always making loads of music in all sorts of styles and I was listening to some of his new beats and studio sessions when I had the idea that it would be great to hear some of these ideas made into a Madlib solo album. Not made into beats for vocalists to use but instead arranged into tracks that could all flow together in an album designed to be listened to start to finish. I put this concept to him when we were hanging out eating some nice food one day and we decided to work on this together with him sending me tracks, loops, ideas and experiments that I would arrange, edit, manipulate and combine. I was sent hundreds of pieces of music over a couple of years stretch and during that time I put together this album with all the parts that fitted with my vision" - Kieren Hebden aka Four Tet.
March 5 street date. Gil Evans to Miles Davis.... Holger Czukay to the ensemble known as Can....Jean Claude Vannier to Serge Gainsbourg on "Histoire de Melody Nelson". That's the only way to explain the specificity of Four Tet and Madlib's collaboration, in this special album that showcases a two-decade long friendship that has resulted in an album that follows Madlib's classics like Quasimoto's "The Unseen", "Madvillainy" and his "Pinata" and "Bandana" albums with Freddie Gibbs. "A few months ago I completed work on an album with my friend Madlib that we'd been making for the last few years. He is always making loads of music in all sorts of styles and I was listening to some of his new beats and studio sessions when I had the idea that it would be great to hear some of these ideas made into a Madlib solo album. Not made into beats for vocalists to use but instead arranged into tracks that could all flow together in an album designed to be listened to start to finish. I put this concept to him when we were hanging out eating some nice food one day and we decided to work on this together with him sending me tracks, loops, ideas and experiments that I would arrange, edit, manipulate and combine. I was sent hundreds of pieces of music over a couple of years stretch and during that time I put together this album with all the parts that fitted with my vision" - Kieren Hebden aka Four Tet.
August 13 street date. Limited metallic silver vinyl repress. Gil Evans to Miles Davis, Holger Czukay to the ensemble known as Can, Jean Claude Vannier to Serge Gainsbourg on Histoire de Melody Nelson. That's the only way to explain the specificity of Four Tet and Madlib's collaboration, in this special album that showcases a two-decade-long friendship that has resulted in what follows Madlib's classics like Quasimoto's The Unseen, Madvillainy and his Pinata and Bandana albums with Freddie Gibbs.
June 17 street date. The Madlib Medicine Show series is a combination of Madlib's new hip-hop productions, remixes, beat tapes, and jazz, as well as mixtapes of funk, soul, Brazilian, psych, jazz and other undefined forms of music from the Beat Konducta's 4-ton* stack of vinyl. Beat Konducta In Africa contains over forty instrumental hip-hop tracks produced and mixed by Madlib. This epic “beat tape” springs from obscure vinyl gems culled from the afro-beat, funk, psych, garage-rock, prog-rock and soul movements of countries as diverse as Zambia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Botswana and the Ivory Coast.
May 20 street date. The Madlib Medicine Show series is a combination of Madlib's new hip-hop productions, remixes, beat tapes, and jazz, as well as mixtapes of funk, soul, Brazilian, psych, jazz and other undefined forms of music from the Beat Konducta's 4-ton stack of vinyl. This collection of beats showcases the way that Madlib’s early Hip Hop demos were filtered out to his friends and associates and provides an opportunity for a unique view into Madlib’s working process: these beats, often freestyled on whatever machine he had at the ready, were picked up by rappers over a period of many years. Trainspotters will find it interesting that beats later destined for the likes of Wildchild and Percee P were made some years before those albums saw release. This album is punctuated with a series of early solo-raps by Madlib and his Quasimoto alter ego and features the cadre known collectively as CDP – those rappers who worked side by side with Madlib during the days of his Oxnard-based “Crate Diggas Palace” studios.
July 15 street date. The seventh installment in his Madlib Medicine Show, a jazz album with his Yesterdays New Quintet called High Jazz. Madlib’s been busy this year. And while his recorded output always spans the gamut, he often returns to recurrent themes, spread across the genres that serve as home base – or bases, as it were. Jazz is one such base. With High Jazz, Madlib begins anew – offering familiar jazz sounds from a series of “new” groups from his ever-augmenting cosmos. Call it “Yesterdays Galaxy.” High Jazz, the name itself a tribute to the landmark jazz-fusion album released by Stanton Davis’s Ghetto Mysticism in 1976, shows a marked development in Madlib’s craft. Every element of jazz is there. Is that tune modal-funk? Was that song psych-fusion? Was that a bossa-tinged run or another kind of latin-affair? Where did that sitar come from? Madlib’s Yesterdays-excursions are never easy to categorize and that’s the point – while experiencing chops like these, the desire to rigidly define takes a back seat to aural pleasure.
January 21 street date. This is a unique Sound Directions cover by Mason London, using the same soundwave-generated artwork as on the original. The cover's imagery and text glows in the dark. The vinyl is translucent green. Limited quantity, will not be repressed. Gil Evans to Miles Davis.... Holger Czukay to the ensemble known as Can....Jean Claude Vannier to Serge Gainsbourg on "Histoire de Melody Nelson". That's the only way to explain the specificity of Four Tet and Madlib's collaboration, in this special album that showcases a two-decade long friendship that has resulted in an album that follows Madlib's classics like Quasimoto's "The Unseen", "Madvillainy" and his "Pinata" and "Bandana" albums with Freddie Gibbs.
Available now. Repressed at a higher price. All backorders have been cancelled. Freddie Gibbs is the product of violent, drug-laden streets but unlike most rappers with similar resumes, he brings the block to the booth without inhibition or an exaggerated rap persona. "Piñata", a 17 track collaboration with producer Madlib, is the best distillation yet of his transparent approach to making music, combining an at times stark honesty with electrifying talent as a lyricist and performer.
October 30 street date / November 13 for LP. With 100% beats by Madlib, "Bad Neighbor" is the brainchild of MED - a cornerstone in Stones Throw’s history -- and Blu - the voice behind modern classics like "Below the Heavens" -- who instantly clicked a decade earlier on tour with Emanon. The album is an exclamation point on the idea that began with "The Burgundy EP", expanded to include Dam Funk and Mayer Hawthorne on "The Buzz EP", and continued until contributions from Anderson.Paak (Dr. Dre’s Compton), Hodgy Beats (Odd Future), and the one-and-only MF DOOM made "Bad Neighbor" ready to launch. But "Bad Neighbor" isn’t the first time MED and Madlib’s orbits have collided. A fellow head from the fertile crescent of Oxnard, CA, MED not only guested on the now-classic "Soundpieces" by Lootpack in ’99, he also dropped into Madvillain’s "Raid" ("Madvillainy", 2004) and made his mark on Quasimoto’s "Unseen" (2000), not to mention making the sole MC appearance on Madlib’s acclaimed "Shades of Blue". Madlib, in turn, provided the lion’s share of production on MED’s "Classic" and "Push Comes to Shove" alongside J Dilla and Oh No. Meanwhile Blu, besides earning HipHopDX’s "Rookie of the Year" bona fides, put LA back on the map alongside Exile and as a self-produced solo artist. "Bad Neighbor", although hazy, heavy, and blunted under the influence of Madlib’s aesthetic backbone, floats effortlessly above the smoke by virtue of MED and Blu’s sometimes topical, sometimes acrobatic, and always on-point interplay. The album is undoubtedly an extension of all three artists’ signature sounds, but it simultaneously defies all precedents to reaffirm each individual’s position at the forefront of LA’s legendary hip-hop landscape.
November 17 street date. There goes the neighborhood! MED, Blu and Madlib return with a new EP called The Turn Up. Soulful, hard hitting raw sounds produced by Madlib matched with lyrics from 2 of Hip Hops elite.
October 13 street date. With 100% beats by Madlib, Bad Neighbor is the brainchild of MED – a cornerstone in Stones Throw’s history -- and Blu – the voice behind modern classics like Below the Heavens -- who instantly clicked a decade earlier on tour with Emanon.
February 5 street date. Brand new EP featuring BLu & MED trading rhymes over beats by Madlib. Featuring songs from the upcoming LP produced entirely by Madlib & featuring MCs Blu & MED. Packaged in limited edition Burgundy colored vinyl!
December 17 street date. 'Bad Neighbor’ is a collaborative studio album by rappers MED and Blu and producer Madlib. Originally released on October 30, 2015, the 13 track LP features guest appearances from the likes of the late MF DOOM, Aloe Blacc, Mayer Hawthorne, Jimetta Rose, Dâm-Funk, and Oh No. The album is undoubtedly an extension of all three artists’ signature sounds, but it simultaneously defies all precedents to reaffirm each individual’s position at the forefront of LA’s legendary hip-hop landscape. Limited edition version pressed on red and black vinyl.
|
2021/03/05
Full Catalogue Search 
