by: Amos Barshad
Article Reprint
This week sees the release of Piñata, the first full-length collaboration from the producer Madlib and the rapper Freddie Gibbs. Gibbs is your classic hard-knock street MC and Madlib is an experimental DIY hip-hop hero, so you could call it an odd pairing. But the truth is, Madlib is restlessly innovative, omnivorously music-nerdy — he’s as likely to nick bits of ’70s French sci-fi scores as he is a vintage Marley Marl loop — and preposterously prolific. As Yesterday’s New Quintet, he makes the kind of hearty, homey jazz he was raised on; as Quasimoto — a cigar-smokin’, brick-totin’, baby-rhino-resembling villain alter ego — he makes the kind of trippy rap music your grandkids will be raised on.