A Masterpiece In Musical Madness

One of the many reasons why I feel hip hop music is dissed so much is because people physically don't know how to listen to it. They don't know how to decipher the slang, what to look for, and how the music is produced. Hip hop may be as close a lifestyle as someone gets to the slums that is as alien to middle class America as those green guys on Mars. Well, the business side of the art has killed the sound of hip hop with all these sampling laws which stifles creativity immensely. Some of hip hops most critically acclaimed records have contained dozens of samples to create a new infectious sound like 3 Feet High, Pauls Boutique, It Takes A Nation, etc... The Golden Age may be over, but hip hop is not and Lord Quas (A figment of Madlibs imagination) proves this with one of the most creative hip hop records in years.

First and foremost, the record doesn't take itself seriously as most modern day contemporaries. Lord Quas has a somewhat uninspired high pitched voice that sounds annoyingly delightful. There are only a few tracks which eclipse the three minute mark with unexpected breaks and skits in between. "The Unseen" just shatters rules of song structure. It's fragmented... but doesn't lose its stride with the listener like Quasimoto's second album.
The thing I love about this record is the jazzy ambience creating a lush atmosphere of beautiful music. Independent labels, like Stones Throw, probably didn't have as much controversy clearing these samples as a major label would have. Madlibs collection of records is unparallel to any other. He scratches a Posdunous vocal on "Microphone Mathematics," masterfully. He searches for records in a store in the middle of a song with a collage of jazz breaks on "Return of the Loop Digga." On top of that, he finds a killer flute sample which has crate diggers scratching their heads where the sample came from on "Real Eyes." You get the sense that he's bragging with his insane music collection on the title track. Not only that but madlib is giving props to jazz legends never name dropped before on wax. The creativity is mind blowing, to say the least.

Overall, true school hip hop fans will have a huge appreciation for "The Unseen." The timing of the samples are concise and skilled, the vocals are simplistic yet hilarious, and it is a surprisingly unpredictable yet entertaining listen. Warning, every listen may grow on you more and more until it gets addicting. So enjoy and let the beat conductors sampling genius take over!