The Other Side: Los Angeles

AMG Review of The Other Side: Los Angeles

Marisa Brown
All Music Guide

Extolling praise on the city they love, producer/rapper/instrumentalist/visionary Madlib and Stones Throw label co-founder and DJ Peanut Butter Wolf put together the CD/DVD The Other Side: Los Angeles, presented by tourism magazine Time Out. Complete with a booklet listing the best, but not most touristy, bars, restaurants, nightclubs, art galleries, hotels, shops, and "illicit" spots (meaning strip clubs), as well as maps of different L.A. neighborhoods, the DVD portion of the package features PB Wolf going to some of his favorite places in the city (including a lot of shoe stores), as well as talking about the growth and development of his label. It's actually a pretty nice insider's look at the area, and should definitely appeal to those looking more toward the experimental and the underground. Those same people will also probably find the CD, compiled and mixed by Madlib, by now an important fixture not only in Los Angeles but in left-field hip-hop in general, equally interesting. A lot of what's included is Stones Throw material (MED and Jaylib as well as three Madlib projects, under three different names), but the Sun Ra Arkestra, Steve Grossman, and Freestyle Fellowship are included as well. Some of the artists, like Jay Dee (or J Dilla, who shows up here with fellow Detroiters Phat Kat and Dabrye) or Cybotron (incorrectly called "Cybertron"), were L.A. transplants, but all have had a profound effect on the musical temperament of the city, and of Madlib himself. This isn't an album about the history of the music of L.A., nor is it supposed to represent a sample of what's currently happen. From odes to marijuana (Quasimoto's "Greenery," Horsemouth's "Herb Vendor") to the threat of mass destruction (Sun Ra's "Nuclear War"), this is soul- and jazz-driven music, a little off-beat, a little off-the-radar, just like the Beat Konducta himself, but its quirkiness and its warmth is what makes it so appropriate, what makes it really representative of the multicultural, multidimensional, multi-personality city of Los Angeles.