Happy 20th Anniversary to J Dilla & Madlib’s collaborative studio album Champion Sound, originally released October 7, 2003.
There’s little better than two innovative artists coming together at the height of their powers to create a project that celebrates hip-hop in all of its unpolished glory. Which is what Otis “Madlib” Jackson, Jr. and James “J Dilla” Yancey accomplished when they recorded Champion Sound. Released 20 years ago, it follows a well-worn “less is more” approach. Sometimes, two innovators coming together to deliver raw rhymes over scintillating tracks is enough.
The project’s genesis began with the Oxnard-born Madlib’s fondness for the Detroit-born Dilla’s beats. By 2003, both artists had built up strong creative reputations and both were considered amongst the best in their field. According to Dan Charnas’ Dilla autobiography Dilla Time, Madlib had gotten ahold of one of Jay’s beat CDs and decided to record an entire album’s worth of music to it.
One of these songs was called “The Message,” a reinterpretation of the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five song of the same name. It featured Madlib rhyming over a mellow beat that Busta Rhymes had rhymed to a few years earlier as “Show Me What You Got” on his album Anarchy (2000). Stones Throw label owner Peanut Butter Wolf enjoyed the song enough that he pressed 250 copies of it on vinyl to be used as promo. The label of the 7-inch release solely read “JAYLIB.”
Dilla eventually got hold of a copy of the record, and angrily called Peanut Butter Wolf. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the song or even the idea of the song; he was interested in working with Madlib. According to Dilla Time, he reportedly told Wolf that “If we’re going to do this, let’s do this official.”
“Official” to Dilla meant recording a full length together with Madlib. He envisioned a project where they would send each other beat CDs, with Dilla solely rhyming over Madlib tracks and vice versa. Jay also wanted the project to be as grimy as possible, with the pair recording their vocals to the beat CDs themselves.
Dilla’s vision became reality, with the pair recording a raw masterpiece. Champion Sound is a nearly no-frills endeavor, with each of the rapper-producers’ beats bringing out the best in the other. And the songs are all appropriately rugged, with, as Dilla raps, “beats and rhymes so dirty, play it too loud and you'll feel a burn where you pissing.” The album is one of my favorite projects that involved either of the rapper/producers.
The vast majority of Champion Sound zeroes in on the gritty hip-hop aesthetic that long appealed to both members of the duo. The only songs that can be considered to have the thinnest veneer of polish are both sides of the album’s first single, “The Red” and “The Official.” The latter track has Dilla holding court in the club and celebrating the album’s success. Madlib delivers a pair of slick verses to a sped-up vocal sample from a folk-rock track on “The Red,” encouraging listeners to bump their music as loud as possible. Unfortunately, re-releases of the album featured a different beat due to sample clearance issues, and the song suffers because of it.
Listen to the Album:
If I had to choose, I’d say Dilla rhyming to Madlib beats is the stronger of the two combinations. Dilla is certainly the stronger emcee of the pair, and Madlib cobbles together jagged grooves that suit Jay’s rhyme style. In this rapper/producer configuration, the pair combine for much of Champion Sound’s best material. The album’s title track combines a soaring sample of a Bollywood flick with dancehall vocals, while Madlib lays down thick dub-infused grooves on “Heavy.” Dilla lyrically skanks to the beat, boasting, “You ain't never heard real live shit, only clones of us.”
“The Mission” is the best of the Madlib-produced Dilla solo tracks. The beat is magnificently ignorant, as Madlib runs a dusty string sample through the length of the song, incrementally increasing in volume so it almost drowns out the vocals. Dilla’s verses still break through, as he proclaims, “And who said producers ain't supposed to rap? / They don’t want the Ruger to bang well close your traps.”
Madlib’s contributions to the album are often narrative based, often involving him wading through the urban underbelly. He warns of money-seeking women on “Nowadayz,” frequents a shaky gentlemen’s club on “Strip Down,” then gets high out of his gourd on shrooms and wades through a brothel and a club on “Pillz.” The murky “The Heist” begins up with Madlib fleeing the scene of a crime, with cops in hot pursuit. After robbing a bank and killing someone all in service to “chasing rainbows,” he ducks and dives through his neighborhood, seeking a way to escape surreptitiously.
Quasimoto, Madlib’s helium-voiced alter ego, appears often on Champion Sound, but he takes a central role on “React.” Dilla blends his Slum Village-era production sensibilities with Madlib-influenced stylings, manipulating a twitchy miniscule section of guitar solo from a prog rock track and stretching it out through the length of the song. Hearing the song today still makes me wish we could have gotten a Dilla-produced Quasimoto album.
Both Dilla and Madlib enlist a talented group of emcees to occasionally assist them. Dilla is joined by long-time partners Frank-N-Dank on the unruly “McNasty Filth,” all three trading verses over a blaring, aggressive horn sample. Madlib teams with Talib Kweli on “Raw Shit,” each adeptly riding the stuttering keyboard-driven groove. Madlib would go on to produce two separate solo projects for Kweli, as well as the entirety of Black Star’s sophomore project No Fear of Time (2022).
“Strapped” features Dilla and Detroit hard-rock Guilty Simpson each kicking “barefoot bully shit” to a twisted string sample. The song introduced many listeners to Simpson, who, 20 years later, is still among the best emcees drawing breath. He makes a damn good impression here, rapping, “You wanna challenge my theory, my n***a? Let’s bleed / Turn the Great Lakes into the Red Seas.” Dilla delivers a half-long, twice-strong verse of his own, attesting to the power of his words. “You can compare it to mace in the eye,” he explains. “I spit it, it burns, you better learn I’m one of the greatest alive.”
With all the hard-hitting material and stories of the down and desperate that appear throughout Champion Sound, “Starz” is an interesting change of pace. Dilla speeds up and flips an obscure 1970s prog rock song, as Madlib works up the nerve to address the object of his affection. “No Games” features Dilla delivering a lengthy stream of consciousness verse originally to a beat which would later be used for MF DOOM’s “One Beer.” “The takeover, rap game makeover,” Dilla raps. “It’s next year now, yesterday’s over.” Later pressings of the album would feature a version that utilizes a bluesy guitar riff. Sadly, it pales in comparison to the original.
Champion Sound seemingly stuck close to Dilla’s vision for the project. It’s uncompromising and often sounds like it had been put together within the space of a week or two, but it’s a lot of fun and eminently listenable 20 years later. Dilla didn’t record many other projects prior to his tragic passing, but it works that one of his final aural offerings was true to the music that he loved to create.
Listen: