Review Summary: Trying harder to sound stoned, Lord Quas still kills it with the microphone mathematics.
Following up records is hard, and needless to say, some do it in different ways than others. That’s why it’s thankful that Madlib decided not to create
The Unseen word for word. However, it’s painfully obvious that
The Further Adventures of Lord Quas sort of loses the certain effortless that was possessed in
The Unseen. It may have been addicted to mushrooms around the duration of the recording of the debut, but Quasimoto’s sound is much less forced and cool on
The Unseen. That’s what makes
The Further Adventures of Lord Quas slightly less of an excellent effort than
The Unseen. Rather than striking the listeners with tipsily paced, woozy atmospheres that seemed easy and effortless while achieving abstraction, it seems like
The Further Adventures… is actually TRYING to create a stoned environment.
Inflicted with bubbling bass lines, spacey sounds, fuzzy synths, and a seeming overreliance on Melvin Van Peebles samples,
The Further Adventures… attempts it’s hardest to create the weed fans perfect rap soundtrack. That lack of effortless experimentation is exactly what causes this record to lose its sense of following up
The Unseen. Some exceptions appear, like the Middle Eastern waltz of “Bully***”, the raw, layered jungle funk of “Raw Deal”, and swerving pianos of “Strange Pianos”, but most of the record is made-up of bassy concoctions, soulful samples, and instrumentals that lack the abstractions that made
The Unseen a unique record.
Unsurprisingly, the unusual rapping of Lord Quas is still here. The mixture between Madlib’s constant musical references and Quasimoto’s amazing vocabulary of slang and wordplay to rap about generic topics fuses together to form an excellent tag-team, swapping from Madlib’s grizzly lows to Quasimoto’s chipmunk highs. At times, one would wish that it was really a Lord Quas effort, more focused around his insesant references to drugs and the rap game in such meticulous, crafty ways with such an unusual flow, but the switch off between the two MC’s (same person) sets off how this record works.
Even with the changed production and at first unusual fit for Madlib and Lord Quas, the schizophrenic stoner ride is still an undoubtedly trippy experience.
The Further Adventures of Lord Quas, while not the spacey, creative abstract world that
The Unseen is, seemingly puts a little more focus away from the smooth, jazz atmosphere into more experimental, funkier realms, all the while still creating a perfect backdrop for great MCing. After all, it’s not like
The Further Adventures… is anywhere close to a
normal rap record.
