Words By: Niles Heron

It’s Saturday afternoon. You’re driving in your car through a somehow traffic-less City of Angels, and every time you touch the dial (in hopes of avoiding commercialism) another dope song plays. Maybe it’s the best song you’ve ever heard in your life, maybe it’s close, maybe it’s special, maybe it’s not, maybe it’s just something different, but it’s always worth the time – and never something you would expect to hear on radio.

Producer, Emcee, DJ, multi-instrumentalist, and Oxnard native Madlib has taken control of your airwaves – which will henceforth be referred to as WLIB AM. While at times it is unclear exactly what his intentions are, you (if you’re like me) let him keep the reigns. The latest release from the ever-prolific artist, born Otis Jackson Jr., delivers a sound too seldom heard from the eclectic Lord Quas (one of his many aliases) – a hip-hop album.

WLIB AM: King of the Wigflip marks the last release to be a part of BBE’s Beat Generation Series (previous Beat Gen. Series releases have included Jay Dee’s Welcome to Detroit, Pete Rock’s Petestrumentals, Jazzy Jeff’s The Magnificent, and DJ Spinna’s Here to There). It feels at home in the company of the previous BBE releases and leaves, at least this listener wanting more.

“We made it through… Single mothers, locked fathers, torn families, East-West Rivalries…Crack pipes, dirty needles, the government lying to the people…Live Mics, sturdy needles, the main ingredient to rockin’ for my peoples.” Karriem Riggins proclaims on the track “Life,” which bodes well for the forthcoming Supreme Team (Madlib and Karriem Riggins) album if it can be taken as a preview.

And if the album is to be taken as a portrayal of Madlib’s life and influences, the LA-Detroit connection is undeniable (of 16 full songs – the album, including Beat Konducta interludes, is 24 tracks – OXnartists and Detroiters combine for 9 songs, 5 and 4 respectively). The production is of typical stubbornly mixed and mastered low-fi dirty drums and soulful samples. Each song has accompanying intros and outros, and if you listen closely you can hear interference crackles and vinyl popping as it catches. An offbeat project for anyone else maybe, but the Beat Konducta makes it all fit.

“I trust Madlib because of his keen ear as a producer. There are very few that have that ear. That’s why Dilla worked with him, because he understood that Madlib is a producer as opposed to a beat-maker.” Repeat lyrical offender, Madlib collaborator, Detroit torch-bearer, and self-proclaimed bully on the block, Guilty Simpson opens and closes the album with “Blow the Horns on ‘Em” and “Go!” When asked Simpson says “[Madlib] pushes the art to the next level with his production. He’s very straightforward with the art and with the creation. Some people get caught up in the other shit, and forget about the root elements.”

With “The Ox (805),” Oxnard pundits M.E.D. (a.k.a. MEDaphoar) and Poke lifts up their own city, as if to counter Guilty’s lyrics about Detroit winters. “[That song] is special to me in the sense that we’re coming from a city that niggas don’t know about. We always gotta explain it like ‘we’re 40 minutes from LA.’ So just to have a song like that with the head of Oxnard hip-hop is special… He is to [Oxnard] what Dilla was for Detroit. He is a good head on our Voltron. With him as the head, we all get to operate and go where we have to go.”

The album’s supporting cast is rich – A musical truffle. Beyond the aforementioned helping hands, a throngs of well-known talent were enlisted to help Madlib’s vision come to pass. With J.Rocc on the Wheels, Talib Kweli, Murs, and Prince Po (Organized Konfusion) on the raps, Stacy Epps in falsetto, and Madlib on the MPC throughout, it’s a lock from the moment you tune in.

Frank Nitt (of Frank-N-Dank – the featured act on the party vibrating “Drinks Up!”) described working with Madlib as a special experience. “I don’t know how Madlib trusting us came about… But I understand… I appreciate the fact that I’m in a rare space, breathing rare air…” Nitty said that trusting Madlib is the easy part. “The hard part is tryin’ to catch that muthafucka. Trying to nail him down, get him at in one place at one time, and finish a song.”

Madlib is a rolling stone. And after all He’s taken us to India as the Beat Konducta. He’s taken us to many a Harlem jazz café with Yesterday’s New Quintet. We’ve become cosmonauts with Quasimoto and gone to Brazil with Jackson Conti. We’ve gone more places and done more things, but we were too high and drunk to remember. And rolling stone or not, it’s been inspiring to listen to Madlib’s transformation, growth, and misadventures. But for a man who started here, with hip-hop more than a decade ago, it is refreshing to have him home, if only for the weekend…

Frank laughs at the concept, and says that “the funny part is he’s a rolling stone that don’t go no where. He just be at the house workin’, but he don’t answer phones and forget about email… forget about it.”