Madlib: Shades Of Blue : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Used to be that hip-hop progressives reached out to jazz dudes to show they were boho intellectuals. But now the tables have turned. Venerable jazz imprint Blue Note opened its archives to Madlib, one of the hip-hop underground's most bookish and inventive producers. What he emerged with, Shades of Blue, is part historical revisionism and part homage. His remixes of Donald Byrd and Bobby Hutcherson tracks incorporate a dose of boom-bap without losing sight of what made the originals great. But when he reinterprets a track through and through, Madlib earns his producer stripes. He turns Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" into a dreamy, astral projection of a song while maintaining the original's trotting gait, and on "Song for My Father" (a Horace Silver number) expresses his love and admiration as a flute-driven breeze.

JON CARAMANICA
(RS 929, August 21, 2003)