One tiny thing I miss from the early days of junior college was a system we had to exchange notes and letters – a notebook (almost invariably a cheapo Popular buy or thin, brown one from Muji) would be left in this tray for us to swap questions and small talk, tall tales or little drawings with a then-unknown senior whose identity would be revealed at a party in May. About halfway through I dug up an old flash drive of mind and chucked a few of my favourite songs down to add to my correspondence, perhaps the closest I’ll ever get to making an analogue mixtape. There were some very listenable artists – Beach House, Franz Ferdinand, Mac Miller, but what I was most excited to share was this 2 minute and 26-second long track from an album I was sure they’d never heard. An intricate, but smooth instrumental plays, making fantastic use of its sample (played by Lonnie Smith, as I later discovered) and crisp, layered drums. But it was the hypnotic, effortless delivery of incredibly dense, yet witty rhymes that I was hoping would draw them in. Words flowed together across bars in ways I did not know to be possible – a kind of snappy, lyrical antithesis to A-Level literature classes I’d been warned slightly about. This was Figaro, from Madvillainy, the one-time collaboration between rapper MF DOOM and producer Madlib. It’s an album I still make a point to listen to in full, this was its crown jewel.
It feels like a punch to the gut to receive the news from a friend immediately after waking up in 2021 – that DOOM had passed on Halloween Day, with his family releasing the news in the dying hours of 2020 (American time). Perhaps this is better grouped with the awfulness of 2020 than considered a terrible start to the new year, but it is awful news nonetheless.
DOOM was a special artist. Mysterious, bordering on being larger-than-life, and incredibly talented, his work sharpened an appreciation for hip-hop – and music at large – as something incredibly rewarding to closely listen to, engage with, re-listen, and unpack. His work was highly experimental, something to be expected from a masked rapper performing under the person of a supervillain, after re-christening himself following the death of his brother-and-rap-partner Subroc. His bars, are peppered with references to old cartoons and films, and the titular track on his debut album Operation: Doomsday illustrates how he weaves together the personal, mythic and lyric.
“I wrote this one in B.C. D.C. O-section // If you don’t believe me, go get bagged and check then // Cell number 17, up under the top bunk // I say this not to be mean, wish bad luck or pop junk.”
The real Daniel Dumile was in the lockup as the song suggests, and he personally struggled prior to Operation, spending time on the streets, his grizzled, coarse voice the effects of cigarettes and alcohol. but the highlights of his projects revolved around the of villainy. This distinct, idiosyncratic style was maintained even when adopting other personas in other projects – as ‘King Geedorah’ on Take Me To Your Leader, joining other kaiju-branded rappers, the storytelling rogue Victor Vaughn on Vaudeville Viillain). Of course, it is DOOM at his core I love – “remember, all caps when you spell the man’s name…”
As a producer – where I maintain DOOM remains underrated – he was content to let old samples from cartoons play over instrumentals to weave stories. (Take the song Hey!, comprised solely of Scooby-Doo effects). As a rapper, his soprano voice is terrible on the few occasions where he unleashes it, and his flow has an off-kilter, inebriated quality to it. But no other rapper was able to master his succinct, confident, style. His best works were careful, textured sonic and textual masterpieces, and even his weaker albums are fun, stylized ventures. Plenty of songs, even from his standout albums, are incredibly cheeky: ‘Kookies’, from MM.. FOOD relates a tale of surreptitious internet use, and the uncleared Sesame Street sample that anchors the original instrumental adds a touch of irony. His ear for transforming loops into jazzy soundscapes or funky, soulful odes meant that his Special Herbs instrumental albums never left my playlists, while inspiring many others: 17-year-old Joey Bada$$’s breakout mixtape heavily incorporates DOOM’s beats, while Earl Sweatshirt, another of my favourites, held DOOM in reverence. His work with Flying Lotus or a remix with Thom Yorke also owe their brilliance to other talents involved, but his presence allowed them to shine. Just a day ago, I wrote my year-in-review listening to what may be the beginning of a tradition – producer Cookin Soul’s 2018 holiday tape ‘DOOM XMAS’, which keenly attuned me to the process of production itself.
If the ultimate tribute to any artist is a successful career they spawn, then I am no superfan. However, one of the only discographies I can confidently say I’ve listened to in full is DOOM’s, off the back of an enormously-large download made in secondary school. It is a painful realization to know that this is now a finite, closed-off corpus of work, even if its contours will change with the inevitable leaks or posthumous releases. Few other artists have this specifically intriguing depth. Abstract but not obscurantist in his immaculately-crafted verses, references and rhyme-scenes, going through his works as an impressionable 15-year old taught me to appreciate the rich, intertextual universe music could be. Samples he picked led me to other songs and genres, obscure features caused me to pay attention to now-past music scenes and personalities: each song was its own fascinating rabbit-hole. His many collaborations and incredible synergy with various other musicians suggested that hip-hop auteurship need not be a solitary experience, but flourishes in the waxing of philosophy over fun instrumentals or the brash exchange of bars. Without DOOM’s skits and storytelling I would never have fully appreciated other albums I’ve come to love, like GZA’s atmospheric Liquid Swords, or learn to read Kendrick Lamar’s heavily conceptual albums as a coherent whole.
Absolutely disinterested in mainstream success and inscrutable even in his scarce interviews, I reveled in the scoundrel-like way DOOM worked his mystery. Like his comic-book namesake, he was known to send ‘DOOM-bots’ to do his bidding, with masked impersonators showing up at concerts to sloppily lip-sync. Of course, this was conduct largely inexcusable for his paying fans, but I imagine him smugly reclining in his studio, wavering between sincere adherence to his craft or basking in the aftermath of a virtual heist. Other riddles might never be solved: who is Mr. Fantastik, who delivered two slick, outstanding guest verses on Anti-Matter and Rapp Snitch Knishes and vanished into thin air? We’ll never know. DOOM to me was both a rogue and bard, incredibly frustrating to listen to at times. There was little commercial appeal – ‘November has Come’ with Gorillaz might’ve been the closest – to him, and what little music he released in the last decade was often a trickle of guest verses (recording date: unknown) or brief collaborations with wildly-inconsistent proteges. DOOM’s work ethic was difficult to discern, and his clear love for hip-hop seems at odds with the scant comments and interventions he made into a genre he was undisputedly a titan within.
This is not to say that the pleasures he brought me were entirely cerebral, or that appreciating DOOM is a tortured, flagellant process. Like any other form of music, he has brought baser, more visceral pleasures, words and sounds he carefully selected acquiring new meaning through the memories thoroughly enmeshed with his music. For some friends who share my tastes – perhaps just humouring me at first – the quirkiest parts of songs have wormed their way into inside-jokes. (It’s impossible to forget the closing of America’s Most Blunted. Quoth another instance: “DOOM’s singing gives me life”.) It would be impossible here to produce the close analysis venerating him as one of the genre’s finest, but I am content to proselytize for him on the basis of fond memories and associations alone. Truthfully, I don’t remember what my senior thought of Madvillainy (if she ever did tell me). I don’t remember how I discovered MF DOOM either, but it has been a happy journey: music sticks around in your head like nothing else.
DOOM’s passing casts a large shadow. He was a one-of-a-kind musical presence at a distinct stage of my life, more than just a gateway into a single genre. It is not always a happy story when the villain dies.
“On Doomsday, ever since the womb till I’m back where my brother went, that’s what my tomb’ll say // Right above my government, Dumile. Either unmarked or engraved, hey, who’s to say?” (titular track, Operation: Doomsday).
We have come full circle.
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