100 Greatest Songs of the 00’s #92 Madvillian – Rhinestone Cowboy

Released: 2004

The thing about Madvillainy, Madvillian’s only album, was that we thought we’d heard it all before. When Daniel Dumile – now known as the bemasked rapper MF Doom – and producer Madlib were first put together their co-blunted lifestyle seemed like the outsider’s tip to result in anything special; working in the ultimate lo-tech set up, the latter spent a trip to Brazil making beats which he then burned onto a couple of CD’s to be rapped over.

Doom was an engima: born in London but raised in Long Island he’d been inspired by Scott La Rock’s Boogie Down Productions and formed KMD with his brother, who died in a car accident before their second album Black Bastards could be released. Like a rap Colonel Kurtz, Doom then went underground, before the collaboration with Madlib helped to creatively resucitated him. As things began to gel, an unfinished verson of Madvillany was stolen and in the file sharing world of the early noughties, that seemed to be that.

The duo were understandably pissed but, returning to the tracks later they began to envision the project in it’s fully realised state, with Doom changing his delivery to a flatter, more laid back tone that somehow made it more intense. In an era where rap had become a multi billion dollar industry for the first time, it felt like it had lost it’s soul; here in the hands of dope smoking roughnecks – and kindred spirits like J Dilla – the source was being maintained.

Rhinestone Cowboy closes Madvillainy, it’s plaintive sample another gathered from the pile of obscure vinyl dug up on that trip to South America. The only track for which a studio was used, the finale reinterprets the world of Glen Campbell’s original, circling and rolling it a joint, the starchy bullshit machismo a paradox amongst the ghostly applause and spectral loop. Like the whole finished product itself this was something that we’d heard before, or thought we had, only for the soon to be legendary undynamic duo to take us somewhere we thought it could never go.