Meat Grinder, a particularly sinister piece from the beat conductor, features DOOM at his wildest spitting some vintage ramblings: “At the gates of heaven/not gno answer/slow dancer/hopeless romancer/dopest flow stanzas/yes, no Villain/Metal Face the death stroke/guest shows/still incredible in escrow/just say ‘hoe’/I’ll test the yayo/wild west style fest/y’all besta lay low/hey bro, day glow/set the bet, pay dough/before the cheddar get away/best to get maaco.” That track is followed by Bistro, which is just DOOM shouting out some people and would be the outro on any other album. The villain then one-ups himself on the next track (Raid), with more classic bars of run-on DOOMage: “How DOOM hold heat and preach non-violence?/he about to start speech, c’mon now, silence/on one starry night/I saw the light/and a voice that sound like Barry White/said “I ‘sho you right”/don’t let me find out who tried to bite/they better off going to fly a kite during a fire fight/during tornado time without a coat than if I caught ya”

It truly is Strange Ways when you take a song such as that one and consider that DOOM and Madlib’s respective talents are unknown to the masses. You’d be a fool to think an album as off the wall as this one would ever gain acceptance by the masses, but it is just a shame that artists this dope will never be as celebrated as they should be. Classic albums generally need some time to marinate and gain that status, but fuck it; they didn’t follow any guidelines so why should I? Classic, yes I said it. Classic.