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Nov 20, 2019As the culture is currently enamored with more rhythmic patterns than the meat on the bone, Freddie Gibbs and Madlib have undoubtedly proved they can compete without compromising their composition standards.
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Jun 28, 2019The supporting cast also includes Anderson .Paak, Pusha T and Killer Mike, all of whom give impressive turns. But Gibbs is the star and, behind the boards, Madlib guides him like a skilled director. The result is an album of unvarnished realities transmuting into cinematic excellence.
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Jun 27, 2019Despite having elite lyricists such as Pusha-T, Killer Mike, Yesin Bey and Black Thought among the guests, Gibbs never sounds second-best. Bandana should mark the moment the Indiana emcee starts to truly be considered as an elite rapper.
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Jul 3, 2019From beginning to end, Bandana is a perfectly-paced album. Madlib never lingers on a single musical idea as he chops samples and switches beats, often midway through songs. Meanwhile, Gibbs, an expert in flows and rhythms, glues each song together with his undaunted, straightforward performances, which offer an illusion of effortlessness.
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Jul 26, 2019The result is an LP more rounded and more stirring than the excellent first one.
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Jun 28, 2019Bandana also stands on its own as one of the very best rap albums of 2019, or any other year in recent memory.
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Jun 26, 2019It is an exceptional modern hip-hop album unafraid of exploring the darker sides of the modern rap persona, all whilst creating a rich, textured sonic environment within which it can be best ingested.
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Jun 26, 2019The first record was a grower, gradually establishing itself as one of the great producer-emcee efforts of the young millennium, but Bandana seems designed to dazzle, to assert a joint legacy.
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Jul 22, 2019Bandana is terrific because it makes you yearn for that imagined history, the struggle from page to audio that surely happened to produce such a god-given chemistry. Freddie's deep, choppy flows might initially seem somewhat at odds with Madlib's production but that's why it works, because playing too much to the soul-soaked nostalgia robs the proceedings of their bite.
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Jul 3, 2019Bandana may deal with some weighty topics throughout its 46-minute run time, but its impressive flow—both in Gibbs’ rapping and their well-thought-out tracklisting—leads to a compelling but relaxed listen.
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Jul 1, 2019For Bandana, the pair taps into that heritage and allow themselves to be shaped by its highs and lows, its heroes and villains. Finding themselves within that slipstream of black thought and life, they plot their course on their terms. Bandana is tradition and transgression: one rapper, one producer, no limitations.
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Jul 26, 2019Bandana continues a conversation not only between eras and between styles, but also between Freddie Gibbs and Madlib, both of whom continue to carve a path wholly their own — with little regard for what lays outside of it.
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Jul 8, 2019Silly mortals. This is Madlib, lord of the freaky loop, who in collaboration with Gibbs across this album proves he can sketch out a classic rhythm with the minimalist precision of Picasso drawing a butt. For his part, Gibbs is an unapologetic street rapper who cusses his way through verses with glee, tossing f-bombs as he relays couplets.
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Jul 8, 2019Whilst Bandana doesn’t have Piñata’s same effortless sense of an instant classic, it has considerably more urgency and contemporary punch, also reflected in the once-again immaculate choice of collaborators, Killer Mike and Pusha T in particular contributing a devastating sucker-punch to ‘Palmolive’.
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Jul 8, 2019Bandana is one of the most satisfying rap records I’ve heard so far in 2019.
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Jun 28, 2019An album that somehow exceeds the lofty expectations he and Madlib set with Piñata.
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Jun 28, 2019Bandana isn’t a sequel so much as another helping of what worked so well the first time: a selection of Madlib’s finest beats, cave-aged and peppered with the same Gibbsian blend of lighthearted flexing and street philosophy. It’s a more refined take on a proven formula, with sterling track after sterling track cementing Gibbs and Madlib as a remarkably effective duo.
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Jun 28, 2019Across its 15 tracks, Madlib’s constant beat switches make it feel more like one piece rather than a series of divided tunes, and you're left with a stunning collage of Gibbs’ headspace: flawed, politicised, desperate to change but tied by circumstance to the things he needs to escape.
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Q MagazineJun 26, 2019Yet for all the walks-ons, this remains a two-man show that celebrates the MC/producer relationship at the heart of hip-hop--and allows both talents to shine at their brightest levels. [Summer 2019, p.113]
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Jul 9, 2019Overall Bandana is certainly a solid album. It was one of 2019’s most anticipated releases and, while it’s not as good as “Pinata”, it’s still a worthy inclusion in any hip-hop fan’s collection.
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Jul 8, 2019There was a lot riding on this album to be a worthy successor to Piñata, and Gibbs and Madlib ended up with something that unfortunately doesn’t come close to those heights, but something that’s still worth thoughtful evaluation and plenty of discussion.
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Jun 26, 2019Madlib continues to provide the backing that allows Freddie Gibbs to shine, choosing to predominantly stick to slower, authentically instrumental led soundscapes across the LP.
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Jul 1, 2019On this sequel, Gibbs mostly sounds bored, aggressively bored or boringly aggressive. The ever creative Madlib chucks in everything he can find to dazzle the listener. When this coheres--in the vicious swamp-beat of Massage Seats, for example--it’s sensational. Often his work sounds too dense to compete with mass-market trap, and struggles to support Gibbs’s gruff rhymes.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 178 out of 194
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Mixed: 7 out of 194
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Negative: 9 out of 194
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Jul 7, 2019
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Jun 28, 2019Album of the Year. Awesome songs, no flaws. Beat Konducta and Gangsta Gibbs did it again after Pinata.
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Jul 11, 2019The album is exactly what I expected from this two amazing artists. The beats are crazy, the flow is on point.