 Rap sees very few supervillains. It's littered with flawed protagonists and faceless corpses, figures who are far from perfect but at the end of the day want to be perceived in the best possible light with the most amount of fame and acclaim. Mad Villainy was a group that reveled in the antithesis of this. The group was a collaboration between two of the most secretive and unique men in music, Madlib and MF Doom. MF has and most likely will remain one of the most elusive figures in hip hop history. Leading up to Mad Villainy, Daniel Dumoulay was yet to dawn the supervillain moniker. Instead going by a stage name Zevil of X in his first rap group causing much damage. Dumoulay would come by a turbulent couple of years. His brother a close friend and producer of KMD abruptly passed away in 1993. To add to that the label the group was on a lecture dropped them due to some less than advertiser friendly album art. This instilled the distrust Doom had for big music labels as from then on he would really only work with small independent ones giving him the creative freedom he so desired. What followed was a half long decade retreat for our protagonist most likely listening to jazz and sipping tea like the troubler he is. However by 1999 he was reborn this time donning a metal mask, a mean physique but still sharp as ever with the pen. Releasing his first solo album Operation Doom's Day on his new alter ego MF Doom. Doom was always unique to a rap game as he rapped from the perspective of someone else. A fictional villain taking obvious inspiration from the Marvel character Doctor Doom. Fast forward just two years his fledgling record label Fondlam folded. Doing Doom to retreat once more completely off the grid even for Doom standards and thus hopes that another record remained slim as ever. Madler born Otis Jackson Jr will go down as arguably one of the greatest and most unique producers of all time. Working from the likes of Freddy Gibbs to Jay Diller he really is one of the most legendary producers out there but there was a time in his life where producing another hip hop album was almost completely off the cards. At that time choosing to use his talent on his one man jazz fusion band yesterday's Quintet. The producer was estranged from his genre. This was to the dismay of his failing record Stone Store who desperately needed a hit. Madler did achieve great critical success with his animated alter ego Quasimodo with his album The Unseen. However like most albums he produced the quality wasn't reflective of his commercial success and fading into non-existence still painfully loomed over stones though. Founded in 1996 the entire business model almost relied on centering around Madlib. To be closer to their prized asset they had recently moved from San Francisco to LA. But this didn't sway Madlib on a return to the genre by himself. Still preferring to work under his alter ego. The duo combining seemed to be a long shot. Both men were eerily reclusive about their personal life and whereabouts. This was the early 2000's after all where it was much harder to get a hold of artists for collaborations. Thus the chances of the two meeting in one room were next to non-existent. However like all good comic book villains there must be a tipping point in the origin story. One where against all odds the unexpected happens. It all started after Stone Store executives had tried everything to get Madlib back into rap. Even throwing around the idea of getting his first group Loot Pack back together for a reunion album. But nothing stuck. The label was on its last legs and were almost completely out of capital. Stranded in LA it seemed like Stone Store would destined to fade into obscurity like Fondlam not two years ago. They weren't able to even afford an office space. The companies found a Christmas act better known for a stage name Peanut Butter Wolf. Yeah it was like the early 2000's these were different times. Madlib was out of a rented house in Washington with Madlib making all his beats out of an Eisenhower era bomb shelter. So this is literally a bomb shelter that was made in the 50's I guess when the years passed. A layer fit for two supervillains. Destiny would throw stones through a lifeline in the form of an LA Times feature for Madlib. When pressed for a dream collaboration he gave two names Jay Dilla and MF Dune. Madlib had named his price for returning to hip hop and it was up to the executives to make it happen. Jaylib's champion sound was quickly fast forward to the production stage but complications rose when it came to the latter. How do you contact the man without a face? Someone who no one in the industry had hardly heard from before his hiatus and someone who's remained as secretive as ever after it. Well as it would turn out it was almost entirely down to chance. Metal manager of Stonesaw at the time Egon Alpat had an old college friend who resided in Keansaw, Georgia. A place where the fabled Dune was said to have settled down. This friend of Egon had just so happened to have an acquaintance with Dune. Contacts were made and numbers were switched around with a care package of some early Madlib beats being sent Dune's way and the supervillain was open to it. But getting him to agree to hear him out was only the first hurdle as the man himself had said multiple times he does his rap shit for the cheddar. One of the biggest management's demands was a whole different ball game. The management on Danielle's side demanded a paid flight out to LA and $1500 for three tracks. Stonesaw after paying for that flight out to LA had virtually nothing left in the bank. Peanutbutter picked them up and drove them back to the bunker and a standoff straight out of one of the Sunday cartoons Madlib samples unfolded. Dune's manager had cornered Peanutbutter Wolf in a room confronting him about the 1500 that was promised. Meanwhile Dune and Madlib were in the bunker sampling some beats. A situation unfolded where if the manager had realized that Stonesaw broke Dune would be on the first flight back to Georgia, a world robbed of an iconic collaboration and our timeline that less dastardly. Peanutbutter knew that he just had to buy time as the more MF and Madlib spent together in the bunker the higher the chance of a potential collab coming off and as haggling transpired upstairs thick blunt smoke and the instrumental to America's most blunted was being played in the bunker and just like that the duo knew this was meant to be. By booking a few DJ gigs scraping together some change and banking on a vinyl advance Stonesaw just about got off money for a $1300 budget for that album with the villain finally being given his $1500 advance. What's interesting about the contract between Stonesaw and Dune is that both truly believed in an anti-establishment approach when it came to music with a 50-50 split of the proceeds after the expenses were accounted for. This is really surprising in the industry one where labels seemed to suck every penny out of the artists and cut corners at every turn. This was due to the fact that just like Dune, Peanutbutter held the same disdain for big record companies subsequently being dropped from his big shot label after the death of his partner in the 90s parallel to what Dune experienced. Dune flew back out to LA and immediately started writing using his time efficiently in order to get back to his children going back and forth between Stonesaw HQ and his hotel room. While at the HQ the supervillain said this on working with Quass. I would hardly see him in the same house but he's always in the bomb shelter I'm always up on the deck writing right and then he'll give me another CD I get the CD and I'm writing you know I'm saying and he's back in the bomb shelter so I would hardly speak to him like we hardly ever you know we might stop and he'll burn one and we'll listen to the beat and then that's it and in the next two days I probably won't see him. They spoke more through telepathy than words. What made the doer work was not a clear well thought out plan of what they were going to do. It was more just too great mind to understood each other's view of music and how they wanted to be perceived. Quickly Madlib shifted into overdrive with hundreds of beats being produced in the matter of weeks with the focus from the label's point of view being put towards the collaboration touted as the bigger financial and commercial success with the MadVillain project acting as the weird younger brother made up of Sunday morning cartoons and obscure sci-fi references but the second release would be put into jeopardy after Madlib's trip to Brazil. Circuit 2002 he was invited to speak at the acclaimed Red Bull Music Academy in Sao Paulo. Madlib a man of the people relished this opportunity. Scouting out samba loops and favela classics he could cut into a hit. Armed with his on the go beat making kit consisting of a cassette tape and a sp303 and even with such a limited armory at his disposal he could probably blow your favorite producer out the water. As while on this trip in his tiny hotel room made the beats to such cult classics as strange ways raid and of course the rhinestone cowboy. But around those two weeks being in this hotel room held our biggest roadblock yet. People were siphoning in and out. However what transpired was an unnamed lowlife sneaking into the lair. Burning a demo cassette of an early yet almost finished version of the album. Baking his getaway back to the United States unbeknownst to either villain. Quickly the album was uploaded to the internet. Back then the full implications of this were not fully explored. From Stonesill's perspective they thought the entire album was ruined. Sales would tank and the entire thing would be a massive money sink. What transpired was Mad Lib and Doom being approached at shows. Fans expressing about how much they loved the album. But this love only pushed our two creators further away from the project. Feeling this heart in that the work had leaked unfinished. And thus just how supervillains do when one plan goes kapoot. They move on to the next. Fast forward a whole year and J-Lib flopped commercially. Doom's hiatus was eventually broken. With his incredible album Take Me To Your Leader. Under his three headed alias King Ghidorah. As well as Victor Vaughn's vaudeville villain. A foil to his Doom character. It's not known why Mad Lib and MF went back to their scrap project. Maybe nostalgia are both realizing the gold that they had at the disposal. But the duo were back. Doom immediately got back to writing. As some tracks still didn't have finished verses. Interestingly the villain decided on redoing all his vocals on the album. And rewriting many of the lyrics. Creating what would eventually become accordion. And one of my favorite tracks. Bustro. According to Wolf. On the original version of the album. Doom rapped in a really hyper more enthusiastic voice. Then he decided to rap in a more mellow relaxed confident less abrasive tone. I think he did it to make it different from all the other projects he dropped in those years. And listening to both Take Me To Your Leader and Vaughnville villain. Mad villainy really does stand out in Doom's discography. Aided heavily by the cinematic-esque beats provided by Mad Lib. However the final release just like the rest of our journey. Was riddled with complications. Mad Lib was asked by the label to redo a couple of the beats for the album. Following the single releases of Money Folder. However Quas had forgotten some of his sample sources. Granted these ranged from the Brazilian loot he plundered to obscure noir films. Then Doom demanded to alter some of the songs. Frustration and tempers rose yet again. And we were on the brink of the project being shelved. Allopat calmed things down. And felt the album didn't have a legitimate ending. Renting the man with a metal face. A $60 an hour studio. Allowing him to choose from a plethora of carefully crafted Mad Lib beats. And the villain came through. Concluding the album in style. With the finished second verse of the rhinestone cowboy. And after almost a dozen years of fighting back against big music. The light was finally shown. Doom's way. Encapsulated in the encore. The sample is a single millisecond from a Brazilian song Mariana Mariana. His wordplay on the song is up there with some of his best. Alluding to the subsequent leak and delay. Intertwined perfectly with his first verse. Which was written almost a year before the second. It sends the villains off in style. Finishing their project with what MF described as his favourite song. The finished Mad Villainy project eventually found its ways on the store shelves on the 23rd of March 2004. To critical acclaim worldwide. A true testament to what the underground hip hop game can deliver. A collaboration between two of the genre's finest. Doing it their way. And not compromising their sound or uniqueness in order to appeal to more people. It's either you see what the villains are cooking. Or don't. The masked villain only enhances their experience. Making you think more about the flip book imagery or exploits the doers are getting into. Rather than the kind of chubby, bold and 30 year old man in the booth. And in an era where the genre was shrouded in authenticity. Being at the forefront. Mad Villainy embraced the polar opposite. Telling stories of the Mad Villain beast show bed and breakfast bar and grill. To being wary of a girl with rancid breath. It truly exists within the league of its own. But if nothing is like Mad Villainy. That's simply because nobody is like MF Doom or Mad Lib. The producer's ability to create a soundscape was like no other. Slicing and sound effects giving life to his music. Telephone styles, bongs, rip and old school cartoon sound effects mesh perfectly. With the intricate flow MF delivers. Track after track. They truly embraced what made both stand out from the crowd. And made an album that has garnered cult like status. And arguably the finest album both produced in their respective careers. And remember if you're gonna say something about the villain in the comments. It's all caps when you spell the man's name.