Mythical hip hop duo reminisce in a London pub.
During a late 2013 European tour, Madlib sat down with UK producer Kidkanevil for an interview on behalf of Bonafide magazine, one of a handful of independent printed music magazines left in the UK.
The conversation took place in a north London pub and while geeking out with your favourite producer might be enough for most hip hop fans, Kidkanevil had the pleasure to have his chat with Madlib gatecrashed by the one and only DOOM, now a London resident and apparently intent on catching up with the bad kid for their much vaunted follow up to Madvillainy.
The resulting interview graces the cover of Bonafide’s latest edition, and the magazine have kindly allowed us to post a couple juicy quotes from the conversation. Read on for Madlib detailing sample swaps with Dilla and DOOM recounting the recording of ‘Fancy Clown’ as well as a frank discussion of oysters.
Bonafide Magazine #9 is out now – it also includes interviews and features with Theo Parrish, Deltron 3030, Just Blaze, Rustie and more. The issue features a cover designed by Stones Throw’s own Jeff Jank, see it at the bottom of this post.
Madlib on swapping samples with Dilla:
He (Dilla) got influenced by some of the things I was doing when he did Donuts, and I took some of his ideas and did some other things, Beat Konducta stuff. Sharing crates, I gave him the Lightworks sample and he gave me couple joints. I heard the whole process, every time he’d do a few beats he’d hand them to me and I didn’t know it’d be an album. I thought it was just beat tape stuff. Every week I’d hear different ones that made Donuts, I was like ‘oh shit he’s doing something different.’
DOOM and Madlib on keeping it raw:
M: Operation Doomsday was raw though; I love it. That influenced me too!
D: Yeah I’m used to working like that so it wasn’t hard for me to work with him and the spontaneity. For instance, Fancy Clown, I love that song. Now the beat was already arranged like that so I had to write around what he had there, so he had the chorus and kind of everything in there and I had to make up a concept around it, like ‘what is this gonna’ mean?’ And I wrote Fancy Clown around that, based on the original record; I’m not sure where it was from?
M: Oh, you’re taking about the loop? The loop was ZZ Hill.
D: ZZ Hill? That shit is ill. So the chorus is already there, so I wrote the whole story around the arrangement. The beat was already in the middle, the verses space were there, you left the spaces there for me, it’s almost like the instrumental was made first and it was already as it is. So yeah, spontaneity I learned from this guy, to really hone in on that. I was doing it before but he reminded me.
M: Back this way too; we all get different things from each other. (A waitress delivers to the table) I did not know you eat oysters.
D: It tastes just like pussy that’s why.
M: No calories (laughs).
Madlib’s contributions to the Stones Throw documentary soundtrack, titled The Beats, are out now. As for DOOM, his collaboration with Bishop Nehru under the NehruvianDOOM alias is incoming on Lex Records shortly.