Quasimoto - Yessir Whatever (LP) - Silver Sticker Cover Vinyl

Quasimoto’s third outing, Yessir Whatever, arrived in June 2013 on Stones Throw Records, and it plays like a secret stash finally brought out of the cupboard. Madlib’s helium-voiced alter ego had been quiet since The Further Adventures of Lord Quas in 2005, so a release that stitches together odds and ends recorded across roughly a dozen years could have felt like a sweep-up. Instead it lands as a tight, smoky reel, the kind of after-hours collage that reminds you why fans still hunt Quasimoto vinyl like it’s contraband.

The setup remains gloriously strange. Madlib handles everything, stacking dusty jazz fragments and bruised drum hits into woozy loops, then sparring with himself on the mic. The pitched-up Lord Quas needles and boasts, while the deeper Madlib voice lurks as a half-narrator, half-conscience. That push and pull has always been the draw. On Yessir Whatever the interplay feels lived-in, like a long-running radio play you’ve wandered into mid-season. Snatches of film dialogue flicker, the drums lag a touch behind the beat, and a bassline will wobble into frame just long enough to tilt the room.

It is a compilation, and Stones Throw framed it that way at release, but there’s a flow that betrays the care in sequencing. The grain of the samples changes from track to track, yet the mood holds. A streetcorner horn line will glide into an off-kilter organ vamp, then a break will kick in with the dust still on it. Madlib has always loved the edges of records, the false starts, the weird announcer bits, and Yessir Whatever treats those edges like prime real estate. It feels curated, not merely gathered.

“Planned Attack” was rolled out with a video as the lead single, and that choice makes sense. It is lean and wiry, a reminder of how efficient Quasimoto can be when he locks in. But the charms here go beyond obvious singles. You get the small cinematic touches that made The Unseen a cult favourite, only with the looseness of a drawer raid. A stray vibraphone loop becomes the whole story for two minutes. A siren bleeds in from nowhere, then vanishes. The music carries the smoke of late-night sessions, and the raps flip between crate-digger jokes, street reportage, and inside-baseball shots at weak DJs. There are punchlines, then there are lines that sound like they were muttered into a four-track at 3 am. Both land.

Part of the fun is hearing how Madlib’s ear evolved across the time span. Some cuts sound like early 2000s Quas, brittle and lo-fi, the drums a little slanted. Others show the thicker, head-nod swing he developed by the time of the Madlib Medicine Show era. The blend never jars. If anything, it gives the album a time-lapse feel, like flicking through a crate and clocking how one producer’s touch shifts over years. That is the hook for collectors too. Yessir Whatever vinyl turns up often in conversations among Stones Throw tragics because it captures that broader arc, and the jacket art looks right next to the classic blue-and-yellow figure that’s come to define Lord Quas.

For anyone building a shelf, this sits comfortably beside The Unseen and Further Adventures, and it is one of those records that can sway a sceptic. If you’ve ever wondered why people in Melbourne record store queues light up when Madlib comes up, this is a clue. The album is approachable on the surface, all head-nod swing and smoky samples, yet the layers run deep. You can listen for the jokes, for the crate-spotting, or just for the way those kicks and snares fail to land precisely on the grid. It feels human in the best way.

There is a practical angle too. If you are browsing for Quasimoto vinyl, this is a high-value pick, and it is often the copy that disappears first from the hip hop bins. The pressing quality on Stones Throw editions has been solid, and the demand from fans who buy Quasimoto records online keeps prices honest. For shoppers trawling vinyl records Australia sites, or ducking into a favourite Melbourne record store on a Saturday, Yessir Whatever is the Quas release that rounds out the picture without feeling like homework. It is the rarities album that plays like an album, and it still hits hard a decade on. If you are chasing Quasimoto albums on vinyl for the stack, this one earns its place every time.