Madvillain - Madvillainy (Stones Throw)

At the risk of going out on a serious limb (I’m really not much of a rap fan; more of a recent, potential convert) and also over-intellectualizing (a vice that is hardly new for me), this album strikes me as a post-postmodern exploration of sound, identity, and popular culture. With this collaboration, underground rap artist MF Doom (the mask-wearing fellow on the cover who constructed an alterego based on the Marvel Comics classic supervillain Dr. Doom) and underground mix artist and producer Madlib, push rap’s aesthetic of pop appropriation and self-aggrandizement to new (?) levels of absurdity. The album’s 22 tracks are filled with fleeting sound clips from third-rate horror flicks, fourth rate pop songs, Doom’s typically blunted lyricism, and various other scraps of pop detritus. Sun Ra also makes an appearance, in a clip taken from Space is the Place (the movie), and there are at least two snatches of lounge piano jazz.

Each track averages slightly over two minutes, which makes for a jarring listening experience, as if Doom and Madlib want to make sure that the music never falls into a long groove. In this respect, it’s an unsettling, schizophrenic album, never comfortable, jumping from sound to sound, throwing out images and clips that obliquely relate to the music’s message. If indeed there is a message.