That’s right. Madlib, aka Yesterday’s New Quintet, Jaylib, member of the Lootpack, Madvillain, and god damn this dude spends too much time making music. If you haven’t heard of this dude yet, you either need to check the liner notes on your CDs because odds are you might have something he produced, or you need to just wake the hell up.

For those of you in the latter category, don’t worry, I got you covered. I recently (okay, like two or three weeks ago) came across this unauthorized mixtape of some Madlib material, and, like everything I talk about on this site, ish is hot. Hip-hop, soul, funk, etc. Wait, rewiiind.

madlib (from stonesthrow.com)
Story first.

So apparently this French guy named DJ Troubl (what do you mean you can’t read german?), after spending his morning picking the “E”s out of his Alpha-bits cereal and eating his Freedom toast, decides that he’s going to make a bootleg mixtape of some of his favorite Madlib jams. He presses up like a thousand or something, and hands them out to his thousand best friends, or something like that. Or maybe he gave them to his myspace “friends”, but only the ones that comment on his pictures when he sends bulletins that say “OMG LINDSAY LOHANNE DIEDS!!!11!~one!” but are actually chain letters that threaten your life if you fail to send the message on to every man-child under four years old in rural China before the clock strikes one. Or something like that. I think it was the second one, though. Yeah.

Anyway, I guess some mark-ass decided that s/he was gonna sell these discs in some stores, and Stones Throw, the label that puts out all that great music, got a little heated. So after emailing him and telling him that (what was he gonna do, track them all down?), they take the (rightful) liberty of just posting the goddamned thing online for free, including the cover and tracklist, right on their website.

Who wins here? Well, I’m pretty sure that Troubl wins, because I sure as fuck didn’t know who he was before this, and now that I do, he’s a certifiable celebrity, because I have pull like that. Also Stones Throw wins because more people will buy their rekkids, same with Madlib. You all win because you get 76 minutes of free music (remember to support the artist if you like it!), and I especially win because my ass gets some more material to post about 3 weeks after the fact. So I guess we all win. That was a good paragraph.

Anyway, all joking aside, I have to say that I was a bit skeptical once I started downloading this mix. I mean, I’ve already got DJ Jayceeoh’s brilliant (and official!!) mixtape of Madlib’s material (I also got that 9th Wonder, but you didn’t ask that, now did you?), and I mean, what would top that? And at first listen, it just sorta sounded like a mishmash of garbage with a few bangers. I was wrong.

Well, I was partly right. Though there are some hot cuts, you probably shouldn’t go into this mix looking for hot Madlib joint after hot Madlib joint. That’s what the Jayceeoh mix is for, and if that’s what you want, then go cop that shit. It’s good hip-hop.

Nah, this mix though - it’s more of a meandering, free-flowing reconceptualization of some of Madlib’s nicer joints tossed in among some random (but really great) soul-type tunes. All hot, though, trust me. I’m not sure how much of this is Madlib’s (stolen) stuff and how much of it is Troubl’s (stolen) stuff, but it flows together much, much better than Jayceeoh’s joint. Jayceeoh’s joint is more of a oh-yeah-let’s-check-track-43-and-track-35-that’s-some-hot-shit type ish, while the Troubl is really something that you should just kick back and listen to from end to end. That’s what I’ve done, what, like 12, 13 times? Needless to say, ish is hot, and a fair introduction to Madlib (fair, not excellent) if you haven’t heard him before.

Edit: I ended up making an episode out of this mix: Mixtape 86 - Lord Quas / DJ Troubl. Or you can grab the regular version over at rappcats.com - thanks quasimoto.

Speaking of bootleg, I got me a Luxpro Super Tangent in the mail today, aka the bootleg iPod Shuffle. I’ll let yall know how that works out. Have fun with that mix, and stay tuned…