Madlib

• 1. Introduction

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  Madlib sampled his first song at 11 years old, pulling a record from his father's collection in Oxnard, California. That early act of borrowing and reshaping sound would become the defining gesture of his entire career. Born Otis Lee Jackson Jr. on the 24th of October 1973, he grew up in a household steeped in music. His father was a musician, his uncle the jazz trumpeter Jon Faddis, and his younger brother would eventually become the producer and rapper Oh No. The questions this story raises are worth sitting with: how does a kid from Oxnard end up shaping the sound of modern hip-hop? How does someone operate under so many aliases that an entire fictional universe grows around him? And what connects the jazz archive of Blue Note Records to a rapper named MF Doom to the film score of a documentary about A Tribe Called Quest?

• 2. Oxnard Roots

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  The Crate Diggas Palace studio in Oxnard was where Madlib first gathered a loose-knit crew of friends and collaborators in the early 1990s. The collective that grew around that studio took on the name CDP after the space itself. Among the affiliates were Kankick, Dudley Perkins, known as Declaime, M.E.D., and his brother Oh No. Madlib's first commercially released production came in 1993, when he worked with the rap group Tha Alkaholiks. His next step was the group Lootpack, whose 12-inch EP Psyche Move was released in 1995 by his father on a label that shared the name Crate Diggas Palace. That record caught the ear of Peanut Butter Wolf, the founder of Stones Throw Records, who signed Lootpack in 1998. That signing would open the door to a decade of prolific work.

• 3. Quasimoto and Alter Egos

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  Lootpack's 1999 debut album Soundpieces: Da Antidote launched Madlib's run on Stones Throw. The following year brought his first solo release, The Unseen, issued under the name Quasimoto. Spin named it one of the top 20 albums of the year. The Quasimoto persona became a recurring vehicle, returning on the 2005 album The Further Adventures of Lord Quas, which drew on vocal samples from Melvin Van Peebles, who is credited on the liner notes as a collaborator. But Quasimoto was just one thread in a much larger web. In 2001, Madlib turned toward jazz and created Yesterdays New Quintet, a group made up entirely of alter egos and fictional musicians he himself played. Through releases on Stones Throw and other labels, that fictional ensemble expanded into what came to be called Yesterdays Universe. Starting with the 2007 album The Funky Side of Life by the Sound Directions spinoff, the project also incorporated real session musicians who were not Madlib pseudonyms.

• 4. Blue Note and Madvillainy

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  In 2003, Madlib was invited to dig through the Blue Note Records archive and remix its tracks. The resulting album, Shades of Blue, combined those remixes with newly recorded interpretations of Blue Note originals, several of which were credited to Yesterdays New Quintet members. That same year he announced two major collaborative projects. He joined J Dilla in the duo Jaylib, releasing Champion Sound. Then came the pairing that would define his public reputation. Madlib and MF Doom worked together as Madvillain, and though the album Madvillainy was released in 2004, work on it had begun as early as 2002. Production was temporarily halted when the album was leaked while Madlib was on a trip to Brazil. He made the record using a Boss SP-303 and a turntable. Upon release, it topped many critics' year-end lists, and its reputation has only grown in the years since.

• 5. Freddie Gibbs and MadGibbs

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  Late in 2011, Freddie Gibbs and Madlib announced plans for a full collaboration album, first signaling the project through an EP titled Thuggin. A second EP, Shame, followed on the 22nd of June 2012, and a third, Deeper, arrived on the 24th of September 2013. The full-length album Piñata came out on the 18th of March 2014, to widespread critical acclaim. Madlib produced every track. The pair, now known together as MadGibbs, returned with Bandana on the 28th of June 2019, which received the same level of critical attention as its predecessor. The Gibbs collaboration is notable partly because it demonstrated Madlib's ability to anchor an entire album's sonic architecture, not merely contribute a handful of beats.

• 6. The Kanye and Mac Miller Threads

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  In a 2010 interview with LA Weekly, Madlib revealed that Kanye West had placed five of his beats on hold for the album West was developing at the time. None of those beats ended up on the final project, which evolved through several working titles before being released as My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. West later spoke about wanting more of Madlib's beats in the 2014 Stones Throw documentary Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton. The Madlib-produced track "No More Parties in L.A.," featuring Kendrick Lamar, was released by West on the 18th of January 2016, through his GOOD Fridays series. That track is traceable to the same 2010 sessions and appears on West's album The Life of Pablo, released the 12th of February 2016. A separate, unfinished chapter involves Mac Miller. After Miller's death, Madlib confirmed in March 2019 that the two had recorded an EP together between 2015 and 2017. By June 2019, he said he would release it if Miller's estate granted permission. On the 28th of March 2023, Madlib told Sway in the Morning that he was finishing the project and that the estate was on board.

• 7. Jazz Roots and Sample Sources

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  Madlib has named Miles Davis, Sun Ra, and David Axelrod as his most significant musical influences, as stated in an interview on Chrome Children. The full scope of his jazz education is audible on the song "Jazz Cats, Part 1" from The Unseen, where he named dozens of artists including John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Cannonball Adderley, Max Roach, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and many others. Uncut called him a master of the "lost art" of sampledelia. This grounding in jazz history runs directly into his hip-hop production method, where records from obscure and well-known sources get disassembled and reassembled into something new. His work with Ivan Conti of the Brazilian band Azymuth, released under the name Jackson Conti, is one example of how far outside traditional hip-hop sample sources he is willing to reach.

• 8. Madlib Invazion and Later Work

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  In 2010, Madlib launched his own label, Madlib Invazion, built around a series called Madlib Medicine Show. That series took over two years to complete and resulted in 13 album releases along with several vinyl-only EPs, covering hip-hop, jazz, remixes, and multi-genre DJ mixtapes. In 2011, he composed the film score for the A Tribe Called Quest documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest. In January 2021, speaking with The Guardian, he revealed he had missed the opportunity to work with Kendrick Lamar on To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015. His discography continues to grow through collaborative albums with artists including Black Star, Karriem Riggins, and Meyhem Lauren. In January 2025, it was reported that his Los Angeles home burned down during the wildfires affecting the area, with Madlib losing decades of music and equipment; a Donorbox crowdfunding campaign was started to help him and his family.