problemface I think I read somewhere fairly recently that he makes all of his beats digitally now. lame!
Apparently he makes his beats on an ipad! He did lose his record collection in the LA fires, but think he's been using the ipad for longer than that. The last good instrumental album he did was Sound Ancestors in 2021. Kieran Hebden/Four Tet arranged it and it certainly helped focus the project.
Madlib's discography is insane though. His prime years (say, 2000-2015) have both Quasimoto albums, the nine album Medicine Show series, the six album Beat Konducta series, Shades of Blue, Jaylib (with J Dilla) , Madvillainy (with MF DOOM), Jackson Conti (with Ivan Conti) assorted full album productions for other artists (Talib Kweli, Freddie Gibbs etc) and then there's the Yesterday's New Quintet stuff - two killer soul jazz albums where he plays each instrument under an alias. And then all of these aliases released their own stuff. A truly insane run of music.
He's also done a couple of jazz albums with Karriem Riggins as Jahari Massamba Unit. I really like Karriem's albums Alone/Together and The Headnod Suite. Jazzy instrumental hip-hop. Think somewhere between David Axelrod and Madlib, without the DJ Shadow cinematic feel you might imagine.
A titan!
