The general vibe was defiant, gritty, and nostalgic, fitting the back-to-basics spirit of a proud lyricist linking with an inveterate crate-digger.
Smoky soul drifted out of every crevice, drugs flooded the streets, and middle fingers never came down.
On Piñata, the duo bridged Gibbs’ street sense and Madlib’s throwback flair by embracing the sounds and attitudes of blaxploitation. Moving in lockstep, Gibbs and Madlib pull themselves deeper into one another’s worlds, forging a new one in the process. The result is a keener sense of each other’s presence. This time, though, they made the effort to meet in the studio and review different mixes and edits, to calibrate. Their overall recording process didn’t change much: Madlib sent beats and Gibbs rapped over them as is-samples, pauses, breaks, and all. Madlib’s beats remain off-kilter, and Gibbs remains gangster, but there’s a looser feel to this record, a spirit of intuition and intimacy.
Kindred spirits, the pair bonded through mutual gumption. But their collaborative 2014 album Piñata succeeded because the two are equally uncompromising: Madlib tailors beats to his eclectic ears alone, while Gibbs insists that he can rap over anything. On paper, Freddie Gibbs, a straight-shooting street rapper, and Madlib, an eccentric tinkerer, are as mouth-watering a combo as licorice and pickle juice.
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