New Madvillian box set comes fully loaded

How do you make one of the most brilliantly intricate, transcendent and weird hip-hop albums of all time even more complicated? Simple, give it more layers. And throw in a t-shirt or something.

At least that's what the folks at Stones Throw figured when they announced their exclusive Madvillainy 2: The Box bundle-pack-deal on their website, which includes new remixes of all the Madvillainy tracks by Madlib himself. (The whole thing is wrapped in a silver-like mask! We feel like kids in a candy store.)

Madvillain (the aptly named collaboration between producer Madlib and rapper MF Doom) hit the ground running in 2004, in one of those beautiful moments in music history where the underground stumbled into the mainstream through a perfect storm of combined forces. This caused one of the most unlikely seminal success stories an indie rap album has ever seen (to this day, the album remains the sixth highest scored in Metacritic history).

Logic would tell us there is little outside of a John Malkovich-esque experience that could get us within a galaxy of these two characters' wavelengths, but putting together some of the puzzle pieces from this box set might be as much fun as a a masquerade party with all of Doom's aliases.

Here's what's included in the bundle:

"CD Madvillainy “2” The Madlib Remix. 25 tracks.
7-INCH “One Beer (Drunk Version)” Madlib's original 2004 version, lost until recently on the floor of his Bomb Shelter studio. If you saw the studio you'd understand.
CASSETTE The Madvillainy Demo Tape. 12 tracks, 36 minutes. This is the first and only official release of the infamous Madvillain demo that “leaked into cyberspace,” while the album was still in progress, as DOOM alludes to in the lyrics of “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
T-SHIRT Nominated. Best Rolled L's. Madvillain shirt.
COMIC BOOK Meanwhile... the continuation of the All Caps video, included with the CD.
THE BOX 12x13x3 inches. Wrapped in silver like a mask."

The set comes for a pretty penny at $124.99 + shipping, but for true fans of the illest villains or music fiends who simply want every part of this piece of music history they can get their hands on, the price might prove a worthwhile reason to open up your money folder.

To pre-order the album exclusively at Stones Throw, go here.

Related links:
Madvillain on MySpace
YouTube: Madvillain - "All Caps"
The New Yorker: Doom's Day

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