MF Doom: a hip-hop genius who built his own universe of poetry | The music

IIt makes a twisted sense that we only learn of the death of Daniel Dumile, better known as MF Doom, two months after his passing, with few accompanying details. An artist who thrived in the shadows, Dumile’s backstory was a real-life myth-making and tragedy-making chimera. Even his face was a mystery – he played for much of his career behind a metal mask, then exploited that concept to an absurd degree, sending masked impostors to tour in his name (“I am the writer , I’m the director, ”he told The New Yorker’s Ta-Nahesi Coates in 2009).

Dumile made his recorded debut in 1989 as a fresh-faced 18-year-old, delivering the final verse of 3rd Base’s classic anthem, The Gas Face (MC Pete Nice’s verse testifies that Dumile actually invented the ‘titular slang). Born in London, Dumile had moved with his family to Long Island in the 1970s and was now a third of New York rap trio KMD, performing under the moniker Zev Love X alongside his little brother Dingilizwe, AKA DJ. Subroc. Their first album, Mr Hood in 1991, marked the trio worthy of descendants of the golden age of rap – witty and agitated like the band Native Tongues, with a bitter political backlash, as evidenced by the acerbic and anti-racist Who Me?

KMD’s second album was a darker, denser beast, juggling samples of Pharoah Sanders and black nationalist lyrics, but their label Elektra opposed their austere track, Black Bastards, and an album cover art. controversial who saw a racist caricature of “Sambo” hanging from her neck. Rejecting the album, Elektra released Dumile from the label with a gain of $ 25,000 and ownership of the master tapes. But KMD was done; Shortly before the completion of Black Bastards, Subroc was hit by a car and killed, and Zev Love X disappeared from the scene.

Dumile was depressed but not out, however, and – after a number of years in the dark, licking his wounds and developing his idiosyncratic voice – he resurfaced before the end of the decade, assuming his final form: MF Doom . For his first appearances at the Lower East Side’s boho cafe, the Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe, Doom performed with pantyhose on his face. Soon, however, he traded in that disguise for his trademark mask, fashioned after Fantastic Four’s nemesis, Doctor Doom. The Marvel Comics villain sported his fake face to obscure the disfigurement that inspired his wickedness; MF Doom, meanwhile, wore his tragic origin story on his cover art, the title track from his debut album Operation: Doomsday in 1999, signaling his commitment to rap “Until I’m Back Where my brother is gone ”.

Sampling from Sade, superhero cartoons and Steely Dan, Operation: Doomsday was characterized by wobbly and brilliantly disorienting rhythms, while Dumile’s new alter ego hit with a deeper, raspier cadence, his rhymes shifted. , terribly comical and menacing (although, as Coates observed, “other MCs are obsessed with machismo, Dumile is obsessed with Star Trek.”) Arriving in a hip-hop underground redefined by figures like the Wu-Tang Clan, Dr. Octagon and Company Flow, Operation: Doomsday proved that Dumile’s time had come. Acclaimed by critics and his fellow MCs, Dumile entered an industrious period, with CDs of self-instrumental released (the Special Herbs series) which showcased a fearless invention, cutting Gojira soundtracks into Hermann-esque horror landscapes (Star Anis) and developing new aliases Viktor Vaughn and King Geedorah (whose album co ncept Godzilla-esque, Take Me to Your Leader, is one of Dumile’s best).

His collaboration with West Coast producer / MC and related spirit Madlib delivered Dumile his first commercial success. Madvillain’s only album, 2004 Madvillainy, was fueled by beer, Thai food, weed and mushrooms, and saw Doom rhyme to impeccably stoned Madlib beats that came from the Mothers of Invention cartoons, Sun Ra and Tex Avery, leaving hip-hop conventions destroyed in their wake. Dumile seized the opportunity, his inspired and elliptical lyrics, his willful, masterful and extremely unpredictable flow, spitting out unshakeable earworms like “getting out of the beat a little / sliding off the meat grinder” on a hazy Hawaiian guitar and declare “the worst hated God who has done strange favors”.

Indeed, this drug-soaked masterpiece could be the best album ever recorded by Madlib or Dumile. Building on his success as Quasimoto, Madlib’s productions favored his sense of dubby, spaced and abstract funk, but in Dumile he had discovered a foil that could offer weight and obscurity he had not achieved. If the likes of America’s Most Blunted threatened to fall into stoner comedy, Dumile took them in more convincing and provocative directions, his low, rough voice, his words slipping from muffled mumbles to staccato hits, his lines sounding relaxed but, to yo take a closer look, revealing itself to be densely constructed and complex. His wacky singing and menacing growl lent Rainbows his sparkling black and expertly inhabited the tale of betrayal by a sad sack of Fancy Clown.

In a genre where ego was everything, Dumile remained relaxed but always dominated by breaking the tempos and the rules. Its lines were dripping with dark humor and stoner-friendly cultural references, but the spirit that put them together was wicked, stacking multiple rhymes like Super Mario power-ups and fond of meta-text intrigue. Watch Messrs. Food’s Beef Rap’s low-key swagger, how Dumile underestimates the effort he puts into his job (“I wrote this note around New Years / Off a few hits and a few beers / Mais who cares? / Enough of me, it’s about the beats “) moments before cutting a block of pure braggadocio (” A rhyming cannibal who is dressed to kill / It’s cynical / Whether animal , vegetable or mineral / It’s a miracle how he gets so lyrical / And keep moving the crowd like an old spiritual nigger ”) which is exemplary proof of the very talent he praises.

Or that’s it, out of Born Like This, where he stuffs so many internal rhymes into a few lines that he has to make it for a bet, but the pile of rhymes of “Already awake / Spared a joke / Barely spoken / Rarely Smoked / Watched People When Provoked / The Mirror Has Broken ”is the perfect evocation of his rap-Rodney-Dangerfield character. That he delivers these lines in such a modest way only makes him bold and – let’s just call him here – genius the rhyme schemes all the more daring.

Madvillainy marked Dumile’s first Billboard Top 200 entry, though an oft-promised sequel never materialized, with Madlib suggesting the ball was firmly in Doom’s court. Dumile instead cut other collaborative albums with Danger Mouse, Jneiro Janel, Bishop Nehru and Czarface. There was also a final solo album, Born Like This from 2009, which took inspiration from Charles Bukowski and teamed up with Doom with Raekwon and Wu Tang’s Ghostface Killah.

Dumile has also made appearances on tracks from Gorillaz, Avalanches and BadBadNotGood, as well as emerging artists like Your Old Droog and Wilma Archer (and was working on an EP with Flying Lotus upon his death). In all of these appearances, his voice was always unmatched: that of a stubborn genius and one of a kind in the Mingus mold who always used his minute in the spotlight to steal the show, but never sounded like he was trying too hard. . , which only made its lines more efficient. His absence will be deeply felt.