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The following is an excerpt from Wax Poetics, Winter 2002. Written
by Jon Aziri.
"I got CDs in my crates like crack in my pocket. Yeah right,
neither of the above." Some people have musical greatness thrust upon them, some are born into it. Otis Jackson Jr.-aka Madlib-has hip-hop embedded into his DNA. His father was an accomplished R&B session musician who played with the likes of David Axelrod and H.B. Barnum. His uncle is Jon Faddis, legendary trumpeter who played with Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, and Bob James among others. Growing up, Jackson Jr. was astutely aware of his family's musical legacy. He was obsessed with jazz, hip-hop, and collecting records. These obsessions have worked their way into sorne of his songs such as Quasimoto's "Jazz Cats, Pt. 1" and "Return of the Loop Digga," a hilariously accurate re-telling of Madlib's run-in with a less-than-knowledgeable record store clerk. After getting spotted by Peanut Butter Wolf, Madlib was signed to Stones Throw Records. No one Could have anticipated the quantity or quality ofwork that followed. Madlib became the leader of the Loorpack and put out a solo project as his alter-ego Quasimoto, a helium-voiced rapper that Jackson created on a whim and later developed into a full-length album. As if that wasn't enough, he is also the sole member of the new Jazz experiment, Yesterdays New Quintet, which has released a crateload of recordings as of late. Madlib may have been born into Musical greatness, but he also worked his ass off to get where he is. A self-admitted workaholic, Madlib has been known to lock himself in his studio for days at a time. During a rare break between sessions, he took some time to talk about his true loves: hip-hop, crate digging, and jazz. Wax Poetics: When did you start getting into hip-hop? When did you start making beats? Of the three-Djing, producing, emceeing-which do you prefer? What's your approach to producing? What other producers out there inspire you? Have you been in a situation where you used a sample and somebody
else uses it six months later? You're heavily into crate digging. You even produced a song
with Lootpack about it. How many records do you have? Did it start out as a hobby? |
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