Madvillain's Madvillainy by Will Hagle;

Author:Will Hagle;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

The Next Decade(s) …

AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT

By Timothy A.I. Verselli

Greetings again. It is Timothy A.I. Verselli. Before following Dr. Truthaverse’s command to unleash a Falsehood device onto your screens, allow Self to pick up where he died and auto-generate one or two more articles, just for kicks.

TASK: To explain how the album art came together, and contributed to Madvillain’s folkloric legacy.

After the leak, anticipation for Madvillain’s completed project grew. During the Stones Throw Showcase at Coachella in 2003—in the halcyon days of the festival, when attendee sensibilities hewed close to nearby L.A.’s indie music scene—fans erupted at the sight of DOOM and Madlib onstage together, reciting word-for-word lyrics of tracks that weren’t out in official capacity. The label pressed “Money Folder” and “America’s Most Blunted” as singles a couple of months later.

When DOOM and Madlib reconvened in Mt. Washington in mid-2003, Jank seized the rare opportunity to take promotional photographs. He called Eric Coleman, enlisting him with the task.

With less than an hour to prepare, Coleman gathered his Fuji camera and a few rolls of film. He knew Madlib, but he had an appreciation for DOOM’s music. He was a fan who was excited to meet the artist. Like Foster dropping off the crate in Kennesaw, Coleman’s expectations for how the day would go did not match reality. He planned his shots in a rush, but just as quickly had to abandon them.

“[DOOM] told me, ‘You have a half an hour, man.’ Like, fuck … that’s it?” Coleman says. “I had this grandiose plan of taking them to a garden down there, [DOOM] was like ‘Nah, we’re gonna do it right here.’ I was like ‘Fuck … OK. Gotta make it work.’ And thankfully, we did.”

There was one additional unsurprising requirement.

“[DOOM] said, ‘Whatever you do, you cannot take a picture unless I have on a mask.’ That was the first thing he said,” says Coleman.

Neither DOOM nor Madlib enjoyed posing for pictures, and the presence of Coleman’s camera made it difficult to act natural. The vibe of their collaborative sessions differed from other artists.

“Try to imagine Thelonious Monk and Cannonball Adderly or fucking Miles hanging out. It isn’t the sort of hip-hop thing we all know, where everyone’s all buddy buddy. It wasn’t that,” says Coleman.

As the shoot progressed, Coleman’s calm but confident approach relaxed the reluctant artists. He calculated the shots he needed in his head, adapting on the fly. For the image that made it to the cover, Coleman asked DOOM to stand against a blank wall and look straight into the camera. After he filled five rolls, a fraction of the fifteen to twenty he’d planned, the shoot ended.

“I remember getting in my car and being kinda bummed out. I was hyped, but I was also bummed in a sense. I remember saying, ‘Man, I didn’t get it. I didn’t fucking get it,’” Coleman says.

Because it was a Fuji camera, it had a tendency to have parallax, meaning what you think is in the middle, is slightly off.

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