pitchfork

A friend of mine suggested that I give the new Quasimoto album a positive review without even hearing it. He argued that Madlib and his pig-faced sidekick are so unique that critics shouldn't discourage their creativity. Obviously, that's just not the way it works-- records can't be rewarded purely based on speculation or concept. Otherwise, Macho Man's Be a Man would be the greatest album of all time. Those types of comments aren't surprising coming from a Madlib fan, though. The artist has a vice-like grip on a whole legion of followers, many of which are loyal enough to his creative muse that, for them, the joy of a genuinely rewarding listen is secondary to the joy of just hearing what he cooks up.
This is actually not awful logic: Madlib's work is generally worth seeking out, even when it's beneath his usual standards. The problem here is that pieces of Misadventures simply aren't finished. Who wants to be the first to say it? I mean, on one hand, if it's unfocused, it's probably because it's a fucking stoner album. If it's slow, then it's reflective; if it's sparse, then it's minimalist. But again, taking it at face value, on those terms, would be to gloss over missteps out of deference to the record's concept. We aren't all stoners, and the sad truth is, "Bus Ride" really is just a couple of monotonous Melvin Van Peebles samples, and Madlib's snickerings, lugubrious bloops and weedtalk on "Greenery" really aren't all that fascinating.
I'm a huge Madlib fan, but there's a lot of nonsense here. Were Madlib not the stoned-face iconoclast we all know and love, it would be easy to point to these kinds of seemingly mindless excursions as pomposity. (That loop at the end of "Shroom Music"? The 30-second Nick at Nite samples? Come on, dude.) But Madlib isn't pretentious; he's just imperfect, and when you head into a project like this expecting-- even hoping for-- 27 stream-of-conscious studio experiments, it colors the whole thing differently.
In Madlib's defense, there is a ton of evidence of his genius at work here. Shit, cut out a half-dozen two-minute sleepers and the rest of the material is actually rock solid: "Rappcats, Pt. 3" buzzes with breakbeat intensity as Quas rips through his all-time favorite MCs, and Doom returns with some Madvillainy shine on "Closer". As an album, though, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas doesn't cut it. I'll admit that somewhere in here lies a damn strong record, but it takes a lot of fast-forwarding to find it.