Madvillainy is the only studio album by American hip hop duo Madvillain, consisting of rapper MF Doom and producer Madlib. It was released on March 23, 2004, on Stones Throw Records. The album was recorded between 2002 and 2004. Madlib created most of the instrumentals during a trip to Brazil in his hotel room using minimal amounts of equipment: a Boss SP-303 sampler, a turntable, and a tape deck. Fourteen months before the album was released, an unfinished demo version was stolen and leaked onto the internet. Frustrated, the duo stopped working on the album and returned to it only after they had released other solo projects. While Madvillainy achieved only moderate commercial success, it became one of the best-selling Stones Throw albums. It peaked at number 179 on the US Billboard 200, and attracted attention from media outlets not usually covering hip hop music, including The New Yorker. Madvillainy received widespread critical acclaim for Madlib's production and MF Doom's lyricism, and is regarded as Doom's magnum opus. It has ranked in various publications' lists of all-time greatest albums, including at 411 on NME's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at 365 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and at 18 on Rolling Stone's 200 Greatest Hip-Hop Albums of All Time. Background In 1997, after the death of his brother DJ Subroc and the rejection of KMD's album Black Bastards by Elektra Records four years previously, rapper Daniel Dumile (formerly known as Zev Love X) returned to music as the masked rapper MF Doom. In 1999, Doom released his debut solo album Operation: Doomsday on Fondle 'Em Records. According to Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club, the album "has attained mythic status; its legend has grown in proportion to its relative unavailability". Soon after release of the album, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Madlib stated that he wanted to collaborate with two artists: J Dilla and Doom. In 2001, after Fondle 'Em closed, Doom disappeared. During that time, he lived between Long Island, New York, and Kennesaw, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. Coincidentally, Eothen "Egon" Alapatt, who was the manager of Madlib's label Stones Throw Records, had a friend in Kennesaw. He asked the friend to give Doom (who did not know about Madlib and Stones Throw at the time) some instrumentals from Madlib. Three weeks later, the friend called back,