Road to the Riches VS. Madvillainy

KUZGUN - Road to the Riches by Kool G Rap & DJ Polo

Opening Statement:
Intro:

This album is an amazing debut album for one of the most lyrical artists of all time, and 4 debut albums are in the Top 5 of the Best Rap Albums of AllTime. This album’s song “Men In Work” brought the Roots together as a group, and if that isn’t good enough, I don’t know what is. This album received a 4/5 from Allmusic, a B+ from Robert Christagu, a 4/5 from Rolling Stone, and a 9/10 from RapReviews. This album paved the way for some Mafioso spitters like Scarface, Nas, Jay-Z, AZ, Raekwon and others
Kool G Rap and DJ Polo rank very close to Eric B & Rakim as a DJ/MC group

Influence:

This album was sampled by artists such as Nas, MF Doom (the artist I am facing), and on a song by Bell Biv Devoe, which sold platinum. The song “Road To The Riches” was praised on Yo! MTV Raps. The song was also on the GTA San Andreas radio. The song was also on The Source’s 100 Best Rap Albums of all-time

Rebuttal:
Alright, I'll keep this simple

7 Reasons Why It Is Better than Madvillainy

1. Lyricism:

Compare these two lines:

"More cheese than Doritos Cheetos or Fritos" to this line:

"Rappers are captured and tortured with rapture/ In 3-D is a G coming at you."

The 2nd line is KGR's line, which is definitely better by miles to this line

2. Influence:

The album was sampled by MF Doom, Nas, and other artists

Madvillainy was never sampled, and if it was, then it is barely known

3. Rankings:

On RateYourMusic.com's list
RTTR is ranked 80 spots higher than Madvillainy

On The Source's list:
RTTR is ranked #53, where as Madvillainy isn't ranked at all

4. Writing:

The entire Road To The Riches album was only written by Marley Marl and KGR, where as Madvillainy was written by Madlib, MF, Wildwild, Peter Lethem, and others

5. Beats:

Madvillainy's beats are extremely weak GarageBand loops, while RTTR's beats are made by DJ Polo, and the classic producer Marley Marl, with nice scratches and amazing basslines

6. Skippable-ness

RTTR has only one skippable song: Cars. Madvillainy, on the other hand, all of Madvillainy's songs are skippable except for the following: Raid, Fancy Clown, and Supervillain Theme (instrumental)

7. Work:

RTTR has many songs with long times at an average of 4:15 per song, and Madvillainy has an average of 2:05 per song

Closing:

DatChefD - Madvillainy by Madvillain

Opening Statement:
Madvillainy is a very in depth album which appeals to hip hop fans due to MF Doom’s simplistic rhymes that manage to captivate it’s audience. It also appeals to a larger base of fans due to Madlib’s old school style of production, almost verging on jazz. Musically experimental albums mostly end up being absolutely amazing or terrible, with a majority of them being the latter of the two. However, Madvillainy is undoubtedly the former which can be backed up by its astounding score on Metacritic of 93/100. It received critical acclaim from most professional reviews. Sourced from Wikipedia, Madvillainy and Road to the Riches have 2 reviews from the same reviewer. Allmusic gives Road to the Riches 4 stars whilst giving 4.5 stars to Madvillainy and Robert Christgau giving it an A- with Road to the Riches getting not severely lower, yet still lower score of a B+

While Road to the Riches has substantially more influence, this is not necessarily a very large factor in what makes an amazing album. Examples of artists who have released albums which have been heavily influential despite not being amazing are Kanye West, Public Enemy, Lil Wayne, Jay Z and Gucci Mane. This is where Road to the Riches fits in. Despite making a severe difference on the introduction of gangster rap, it misses out on being an amazing album. In addition to this, it is overshadowed in regard of pioneering gangster rap, influence and quality by the NWA classic Straight Outta Compton. Kool G Rap’s lyrical skills pushes this album up a lot, while it is a times often bought down by DJ Polo’s almost one dimensional production skills. This is the key area where Madvillainy outshines Road to the Riches as an album which constantly switches up the types of beats used to keep the audience interested. MF Doom delivers his usual lyrical genius, but it is widely agreed and understood that Madlib’s production was the real standout in Madvillainy

Rebuttal:
There are 2 things argued in Kuzgun’s opening arument. The first is that the reviews that he has found state that Road to the Riches is a good album. As I mentioned in my opening statement, the Wikipedia listed reviews – where Kuzgun’s whole opening has been heavily influenced from -outweigh the ones for Road to the Riches showing that people who study rap as their full time jobs agree that Madvillainy is superior to Road to the Riches

The other main point made is that Kuzgun has stated that Road to the Riches has been sampled by other rappers, whereas Madvillainy has not and also that Madvillainy uses samples whereas Road to the Riches does not. However, both of these points are incorrect. Although it is true that Road to the Riches has been sampled more, this is due to it being released 15 years prior to Madvillainy, 26 years ago from the current date. Madvillainy has been sampled by well-known artists such as Drake, Earl Sweatshirt, Talib Kweli and even the legendary Mos Def. Road to the Riches sampled many older artists such as:
Poison sampling James Brown, Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane
Road to the Riches sampling Billy Joel and The Commodores
Cars sampling Gary Numan’s version of Cars
Truly Yours sampling Kool and the Gang
It’s a Demo sampling James Brown and Eddie Murphy
Men at Work sampling Apache by the Incredible Bongo Band
Butcher Shop sampling their own song It’s a Demo which was also in the album
Cold Cuts sampling 3 other songs from the same album and Indeep’s Last Night a DJ Saved My Life
She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not sampling Isaac Hayes
With this being taken into account, sampling has been used a lot by a whole host of various artists in the extensive history of hip hop from the previous era – which in Road to the Riches’ case, from the funk and soul era. Had Madvillainy and MF DOOM come first chronologically, I would assume that the case of Kool G Rap and DJ Polo sampling MF DOOM to be likely

Closing:
For the final part of my argument for why Madvillainy is greater than Road to the Riches, I will concentrate on how rap should be reviewed and break it down to the basics. I will focus on the 4 most important aspects of rapping: production, flow, lyrics and subject matter/ storytelling
Production: Road to the Riches uses the basic beat scratches and samples a lot of James Brown-esque funk/soul sounds which were very common around 1989, making it no different to a lot of other albums and artists at that time. In contrast to this Madvillainy is a concept album which is not often attempted successfully, yet is done as a masterpiece by Madlib. Madvillainy is often referred to as the greatest concept album of all time with its main competition coming from other legendary albums such as Undun, Good Kid Maad City, 808s & Heartbreaks and Because The Internet

Flow: The rapping in Road to the Riches is rather clunky at times and where Kool G Rap has undoubtedly developed one of the greatest flows in the history of rap, for this album the flow is under average with the exception of Men at Work. Comparing this to MF DOOM’s spectacular flow is possibly one of the biggest upsets this tournament will see as he outflows Kool G Rap’s by a gigantic amount. Each track flows into each other in the same way that MF’s lines flow right into the next with undeniable smoothness

Lyrics: The lyrics are admittedly great in Road to the Riches. However, Madvillainy’s rhyme scheme is superior with MF DOOM spitting double entendres constantly. His brilliance with words just doesn’t stop and with the lack of hooks he focuses all of the attention onto them and captivates you into the story. The lyrics always match up perfectly with the beat choices made by Madlib creating the perfect sound for the album

Subject Matter/ Storytelling: The subject matter for both albums? Both very unrelatable with Road to the Riches being aimed towards true gangsters which most people – if being honest with themselves – are not and Madvillainy being about a genius super villain. However, looking at the storytelling side of it Road to the Riches tells a basic story in some of the songs, but most are essentially pretty much about nothing. This is the part where Madvillainy TRULY shines. Rather than addressing each song as a separate story, Madvillain chose to create a connected album which creates a larger story. Madvillainy consists of 22 songs which are all roughly about 2 minutes, each progressing the story along with – like a TV show compared to a movie – lots of smaller episodes offering more attention to detail