Coda.fm

Shades of Blue

by Madlib

• Buy it at Amazon.com

The hip-hop producer extraordinaire tackles Blue Note's soul-jazz catalog on his latest project, given free reign to rummage around the fabled label's vaults. On one level, the project makes perfect sense given Madlib's Yesterday's New Quintet work--he clearly has an ear for the Blue Note jazz aesthetic. The remixes and reinventions here are mostly pleasant and even surprising at times--get down with "Mystic Bounce," a flip on Ronnie Foster's "Mystic Brew." Yet, some of these tracks seem a little too casual and undercooked, making Shades of Blue feel a bit too much like just another Madlib side project. In fact, Blue Note had already done a better job with this very same concept on their largely forgotten 1996 New Groove compilation, where artists such as Large Professor and the Roots took their stabs at the label's catalog. --Oliver Wang