Quasimoto - The Further Adventures of Lord Quas
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The first thing you hear is a short sample of what sounds like Elmer Fudd. It's hard to tell what word he is saying, and before you can figure it out there is a quick pause and the sounds of the Joker's laugh; a slow sampled, slinky soul-jazz riff and the voice of a character much more peculiar than anything Looney Tunes ever overdubbed.
Further Adventures of Lord Quas is a psychedelic aural cartoon where the main character is Quasimoto, a high-pitched reprobate whose main focuses include "smokin' trees" and flowing with whatever the stream of consciousness happens to be.
Quas is the "bad character" and alter ego of cult fave hip-hop MC, Madlib. As we know from Madlib - real name, Otis Jackson, Jr. - and his work with MF Doom, Lootpack, Peanut Butter Wolf and so on, having multiple personalities can be a healthy thing that allows the expression of many creative voices.
Like Doom, Quas raps about anything and everything in the context of relevant humor with a delivery cadence that feels unconventional. During "Hydrant Game", Quas quips, "Don't go away mad/Just go away/You ain't gotta go away mad, girl/Just go away…You ripped me for the last time, raisin' your leg on me (huh)/Now here you come back all fresh and clean as you can be."
Often, during the beginning or middle of a line, the lyrical tempo rolls slow; then, within the last two beats, Quas drops a barrage of words and ideas that leave the listener's mind gasping. Many lines, such as the following from MF Doom-feature "Closer", are stridently laughable: "MF Doom, Quas high like skyscrapers/Quasimoto gettin' more ass than toilet paper."
"Hydrant Game" also shows the proclivity of Jackson to use Melvin Van Peebles film dialogue samples in his production. During one segment, a sampled voice calls, "I done tried to tell ya" as Quas and a guest MC respond, "The world ain't all that high/the world ain't all that, no/the world ain't all that, true/So now who's the fool?"
There are some moments in which this sporadic mashing of skits is too experimental, when the mix becomes a distraction to any sense of a groove. Then again, in the best Frank Zappa recordings, cohesion came from a structured sense of overall idea even though at times the music seemed frenetic and disjointed. That being said, something tells me that Zappa doesn't occupy too much of Quas's mind and/or record collection.
The overall...
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