In late 1999, when they were in the studio working on Voodoo, Jay Dee had D'Angelo and Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson check out Lootpack's 1999 album Soundpieces: Da Antidote!, featuring producer/MC Madlib. The three veterans obsessed about its virtues for days. "Madlib is my hero," says ?uestlove. "He's what's right about hip hop. He can make whole compositions with 12 seconds of sampling time... On his luminous solo debut, Angles Without Edges, Madlib, 28, takes his musical philosophy into his own hands. "A lot of people call jazz dead," he says of his project. "But if you bring it in a hip hop form, maybe some young cats who never listen to that stuff will peep it." ... The eccentricities of the artist born Otis Jackson Jr. in Oxnard, Calif., go beyond his multiple musical personalities... The workaholic finds his own buried treasure in jazz and soul records procured from family elders. He then cranks out unpolished but brilliant production for the Lootpack and other underground luminaries... One of those not-intended-to-be-released projects, Quasimoto's The Unseen, dropped in 2000. The underground sensation is piloted by an unidentified furry monster with a voice that sounds like Q-Tip on helium. "A lot of people ain't gonna feel my music for at least 10 years, 'cause they're used to what the radio plays...." - Next, Vibe Magazine (January, 2002)
