About

- The Analog Vault // Essential Listening -

The Unseen is the debut studio album by Quasimoto, an alter ego of American hip hop musician Madlib, originally released under Stones Throw Records in 2000.

"Each one of music hyphenate Madlib’s multidisciplinary projects tend to be revelatory. But even among the Californian native’s treasure trove of hip-hop jewels, few were as sui generis as his high-pitched yellow aardvark alter ego, Quasimoto. Quasimoto’s debut on Stones Throw was a quantum leap for Madlib’s creativity journey - with the album featuring a boisterous assembly of funk, prog, jazz, and soul samples, punctuated by various skits and interludes.

Madlib’s idiosyncratic beats were augmented by the surreal and free-associative verses of the rapper duelling with the animated split personality Lord Quas, who satirized gangsta rap. The Unseen has proven to be an impeccable showcase of Madlib’s unbound creativity and proficiency as both a skilled rapper and consummate producer." - The Analog Vault

“When The Unseen was released in 2000 as the solo debut from Lootpack MC/producer Madlib, no one could have known that it would be just the first album in an arm's-length discography that would cover everything from live jazz to Doom and Dilla collaborations, mostly to gushing critical acclaim. At the time, it was simply a quirky leftfield hip-hop record by a guy who burned grass like a wildfire and lived in Peanut Butter Wolf's basement-- like literally lived in the basement studio known as the Bomb Shelter. No one knew that Madlib preferred the solitude of the studio to pretty much anything else and that records flowed from his mind and sampler at a dizzying pace. Now, thanks to endless profiles and album reviews, we know, and it makes The Unseen even more interesting.

Of course, the main attraction of any Madlib record is his production, and The Unseen holds up particularly well because Madlib hasn't changed this particular strain of his beatmaking all that much. Instead of tinkering with his style, he creates a new one. When he wanted to do some live jazz, he did Yesterday's New Quintet. Street bangers went to the Jaylib album. Pop remixes, reggae mixtapes, instrumental 12"s, nothing stays on paper with Madlib. So anyone who slobbered over Madvillainy or The Further Adventures of Lord Quas won't be disappointed by the now five-year-old production, nor should they skip Lootpack's Soundpieces or MED's Push Comes to Shove. If anything, The Unseen is a better "album" than Further Adventures because the compositions are more fleshed-out, more cohesive and, well, more. Madlib has a short attention span, but he kept most of the songs to almost three minutes here without much junk. The jazz and soul samples are as obscure and well-selected as ever, with Madlib's particular style of chopping a drum sample keeping the beat from becoming a bore.” – Pitchfork

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