My 125 Favourite ’90s Hip-Hop Albums
#113 Lootpack - Soundpieces: Da Antidote!
“Down with the Liks / Jump straight from the bass onto the kicks / Non-freestyling MCs fall straight down in the pits / My name be Jack, spontaneous freestylist when I catch wreck / Brothers bite me so hard saying my rhymes I ain’t even wrote yet / So I take it to the max, take out fake-funkin’ Jacks / Get to the point as I rock over Madlib’s bumpin’ tracks”
I guess Madlib’s probably best known for his production work as part of Madvillain. This was his first project, along with Wildchild and some DJ, and it’s really good, in that kind-of laid back, late-’90s west coast style. Think Dilated Peoples (who guest on the track ‘Long Awaited’, and as usual, painfully suck), but like a 1000 times more interesting.
There isn’t much to say really about the vocals - they’re fine, but not really remarkable in any way. Madlib hasn’t really yet developed the idiosyncratic lyrical style he exhibits on his Quasimoto project yet. I mean, in the end, there’s only so much one can say about wack emcees, etc.
The beats, nevertheless, are fantastic. I mean, obviously, it’s Madlib - I have a major weakness for this kind of crackly, lo-fi SP-1200 sample-based production, and few do it better than him. Most notably, I love the fact that he rarely seems content with looping a couple of bars, and hence, his beats are always layered with lots of different elements.
