Peanut Butter Wolf Offers an Update on the Long-Awaited 'Madvillainy' Sequel

"DOOM was always telling me 'It's 85% done, it's 85% done.' That was the magic number."

Peanut Butter Wolf joined Pete Rosenberg and Cipha Sounds on a new episode of their Juan Ep is Dead podcast to discuss the late MF DOOM's tenure as a Stones Throw Records rapper.

"He was probably the first person I looked up to that I actually started working with," the label founder admits while recalling the rapper's arrival in Los Angeles to record Madvillainy, his classic 2oo4 collaborative album with Madlib. From there, Wolf takes Pete and Cipha through the stages of Madvillainy's development (from fringe side-project to EP to its final, nearly-flawless form,) what it was like juggling the releases of that album and Champion Sound (Madlib's other high-profile collaborative album with J Dilla,) and how Madvillainy outperformed the lone Jaylib album even with DOOM refusing to take advantage of the marketing budget he was offered.

After delving into his personal relationship with DOOM: the near-human, Wolf pivots to the prospects of a long-awaited and oft-rumored sequel to Madvillainy. "DOOM was always telling me 'It's 85% done, it's 85% done.' That was the magic number," Wolf recounts before revealing the rapper did eventually send back 11 songs in 2009. However, even then DOOM insisted he wait to release anything until "a few more songs" were done. And in true Villain fashion, the longer Wolf waited, the more of the submitted verses would pop up on other people's albums or leaked to Youtube. And once too much time passed it was unclear what could even be included in a proper Madvillainy follow-up. "I got a little frustrated, and I was just like, you know, 'It's gonna happen when it's gonna happen.' I don't wanna be the guy to force creativity or anything," Wolf adds, half lamenting not taking Chris Lighty's "just give me the fucking album" approach to the delivery of A Tribe Called Quest's The Love Movement.  "I don't know what we're going to do with those tracks" Wolf confesses. He does claim to have the green light from DOOM's team and family to collect the completed material into one batch, but sounds unsure of how he'll package it.

The Stone Throw chief capped an episode with appearances from Bobbito Garcia and Kurious Jorge, two members of The Villain's inner circle who discussed the rapper's life, legacy, and witnessing his transformation.

Hear Peanut Butter Wolf discuss the making of Madvillainy and the possibility of a sequel in the first part of Juan Ep is Dead's MF DOOM tribute below.

Correction: We initially wrote that Peanut Butter Wolf had support from "DOOM's team and family" to release Madvillainy 2 material. But Wolf never mentioned DOOM's family, just his manager Saadiq. We deleted this sentence and regret this error.