In addition to his accomplished career as a TV/film actor, and now director of the film Shortcomings, Randall Park has also had a long history with hip-hop. In the ‘90s, Park was part of the underground/backpack rap group Ill Again, which he used as inspiration in the rom-com Always Be My Maybe. While Park created the fictitious band Hello Peril for the film, he and producer Dan the Automator co-wrote its repertoire, including a rap song about Marcus (Park’s character) punching actor Keanu Reeves. In 2015, Park appeared in the Eminem music video “Phenomenal,” from the rapper’s soundtrack to 2015’s Southpaw.
For Park, the 200 album The Unseen by Quasimoto — a hip-hop duo composed of Madlib and his animated alter ego Lord Quas, portrayed by producer and rapper Otis Jackson Jr. — is a piece of work that deeply spoke to him. It’s a collection of funny, dark, psychedelic songs that Park says he listens to from start to finish more than any other album.
Released via Stones Throw Records, The Unseen’s psychedelic jazz-rap ranked at number 17 on Spin's list of the best albums of 2000. In 2015, it was 29th on Fact's "100 Best Indie Hip-Hop Records of All Time" list and was rated as one of the "30 Best Underground Hip Hop Albums Since 2000" by HipHopDX.
This segment has been edited for length and clarity.
[The Unseen] is one of my all time favorite albums, and it's definitely one that I've listened to from beginning to end in one sitting more than any other album. It's very weird, very psychedelic, but it's just such a great piece of work.
*Note: Lyrics contain profanity
It’s kind of a collaboration album between one of my all time favorite producers called Madlib and a character called Lord Quas, who essentially is also Madlib. So it's a collaboration album made by just one person who was apparently on shrooms while making this album. And if you listen to it, you might get that feeling along with many other feelings.
For this character Lord Quas, what Madlib does, he records his raps in a slowed down process, and then speeds it back up to match the beat leaving this kind of very weird high pitched voice of this character Lord Quas and he, [as] himself, raps along with this very high pitched character. It gives the album kind of this comical feel, but it's also extremely dark and unsettling.
That is what has me sitting throughout the album from beginning to end, but also the music is kind of this hodgepodge of samples, loops, and spoken word.
I wouldn't say it's a personal work, at least from an outsider perspective, but it's definitely a very internal work, conscious, and it's very unconscious. It's this delving into the whole id-ego thing, these dark sad, ugly parts of him as an artist, and I just love that.
If people don't like it, I can understand that, and I can still be friends with people who don't like it. But if people like it, I will feel an automatic connection to them, because it is just one of those weird, very specific oddities that for some reason – maybe I should speak to my therapist about it – it just spoke to me so deeply. I think people will be surprised that the dad from Fresh Off the Boat loves this album.
More: Director Randall Park on ‘Shortcomings,’ and good representation
More: Randall Park: Fresh Off The Boat (2015)
More: Randall Park on 'The Interview' and 'Fresh Off the Boat' (2015)