I'd Bet on Doom Vs Any Rapper in a Beef
Writers, producers, rappers, and curators recall their earliest memories of MF DOOM and why their varying introductions turned them into lifelong fans.
MF DOOM is one of hip-hop's greatest (and most complicated) anomalies.
The weeks post-obit the annunciation of his departure accept seen an outpouring of reverence from peers, pedestrians, and disciples alike. Not but for his monotone self-mythologizing or for his singular ability to avert and subvert public life and norms or fifty-fifty for the DIY ethos he brought to every session and instilled into the broader M.O. of indie rap. But, perhaps, most endearingly, for how he built a world as expansive as it was subconscious from the common gaze beneath the sheen of mainstream hip-hop. And how everyone felt welcomed in it regardless of what brought them.
That last part hits the hardest for this particular fan. Equally I spoke with friends and artists in and exterior of music nearly the projects that pulled them in, information technology seemed everyone was drawn from a singled-out vantage, and for disparate reasons, to a different facet of DOOM'due south artistry. Some loved the "lo-fi" aesthetic he damn-near singlehandedly developed as a bedroom producer (long before information technology was the standard.) Others came for the one-liners or the impossible consistency of his pen. Merely no matter how you lot landed in DOOM's globe, it was the perfect indicate of entry.
There are still and so many aspects of DOOM'due south touch on on music and fine art at large left to examine; the contentious rivalry between his modify-egos, the very logical adoption into the Adult Swim family unit, the knack for sampling some of the most ubiquitous and attainable R&B ever recorded. And afterwards a few more laps around the dominicus, information technology'due south entirely probable a few more than remaining angles will surface.
Merely until then, we've collected the varying testimonies of 10 writers, rappers, producers, and curators, each sharing their earliest memories of The Villain'due south music and why those introductions led to lifelong infatuations.
Nelson Bandela (Producer)
Source: Artist
When I was in high school, my senior year during Turkey Day, we went up to Chicago. My sis was going to schoolhouse upwardly in that location and her roommate was a family friend. He was working on making a vanquish and said it reminded him of MF DOOM and I was like, "Who??"
And he laced me. He gave me an MP3 CD that had four or five albums on there. I got Vaudeville Villain, Performance: Doomsday, Venomous Villain, Madvillainy, and some Special Herbs were on there. The fact that I knew he was making almost of the beats blew my listen. It really made me want to rap and produce and record and have aims over how I nowadays regardless of the circumstances. I've tried to do that since.
Kenny Fresh (Founder of Fresh Selects)
Photo by Lisa Pardo, painting by Keren Olisa.
I remember there was this website where yous could download secret rap music videos (the name completely escapes me though). This was when there was nowhere else to lookout them – MTV or BET definitely wasn't giving them any airplay. This was besides the era where it'd accept hours to download a picture file on dial-up net, then annihilation I had to await that long for, had better been worth it.
Anyway, I was going through what they had on there, which was simply maybe 10 to 20 videos, tops. I had been seeing the MF DOOM name around online and in Elemental Mag at the time. I checked out the video for "I Hear Voices Pt. i" and was diddled abroad. Just the raw energy and originality of information technology, I'd never heard annihilation like that. I must've watched it like 10 times that first day. I bought Operation: Doomsday on CD soon after that and take been a fan ever since.
Jacqueline Schneider (Culture Author)
Source: Writer
I got into DOOM when I was in high school in San Diego. Hip-hip didn't accept a huge footprint in my town — house music was more than so the musical driver in SD — so we'd drive up to LA, two hours away, for shows and DOOM was one of my first real backpacker experiences.
His energy was and then accurate and honest and the crowds at his shows reflected that. Moving through the sea of people, pushing your way to the front was more of a unproblematic and fluid motility of shared appreciation for the musical experience vs. the elbow sharpening yous might experience at a more straightforward rap show. Oh and clouds of smoke. Like so much weed, that fifty-fifty if you didn't fume, y'all were high as fuck.
Madvillainy was really the CD that played when my alarm went off for school in the morning, back when CD players ran our lives and obviously had built-in alarm clocks. Particularly the song "Meat Grinder," would wake me upward – what a time. I'm sure my mom loved that. Madvillainy is such a musically daring album – each song really tells a story on its ain and somehow the entire body of work maintains a thoughtful consistency that very few artists have been able to achieve in hip-hop. The song "Accordion" always gets me lyrically – somehow DOOM magically tells years of lived experience, layering concepts of ego, popular culture, and intellectual references in a single line: "Slip like Freudian/Your first and terminal step to playin' yourself like accordion."
The fashion the song starts, "livin' off borrowed fourth dimension, the clock tick faster," is forever burned into my mind because the concept of time was never something I really thought well-nigh until I heard this lyric and now the concept of fourth dimension being borrowed, hearing it as an adult, feels too real. Now that I am thinking almost it more deeply, DOOM was a big inspiration for my early career as a announcer. He was such a stoic and true storyteller that fabricated you lot mind – a skill very few possess and have the ability to uphold over time.
Dane Orr (Producer)
Source: Artist
[I got into DOOM] during the P2P file sharing Kazaa era. I remember being mind-blown that y'all could get instrumentals to rap songs — or that they were fifty-fifty for sale somewhere. Back then I cared a lot more about the beats than the raps (got me in a lot less trouble with my parents) and I believe one of the Special Herbs was my very first intro to DOOM.
I stuck to the instrumentals for a minute earlier the kids in my band class at school were similar, "Yo yous need to hear MF DOOM." I was into comics equally a child, so it was almost similar I had always known he existed only never fully candy who he was or what he was doing. I recall it was when I discovered that he had alter-egos that I became obsessed. Victor Vaughn, King Geedorah, Madvillain. Information technology was amazing to exist able to notice this whole world almost at once.
I volition say that none of that matters without some of the best witty confined and amazing samples flipped into iconic beats. Only the fact that y'all could tell he was sampling old movies or cartoons in addition to Sade and shit similar that was amazing to me. It made me an immediate fan. He was fearless and didn't care what people thought and that energy is really of import to young listeners. I recall a lot of artists attempt to create a earth for the listener to step into but nobody has matched DOOM on the level of intricacy and depth to what he created. Others take tried since and it almost e'er feels like an homage or parody of DOOM. That speaks to the level of Dumile's genius.
Matt Schonfeld (Co-Founder, Not97)
Source: Writer
I got into MF DOOM in 2005. My older brother Zach is responsible for putting me on to a lot of music growing upwardly and would read Pitchfork, Stylus, PopMatters, and others oftentimes. I remember Madvillainy was on a lot of yr-end 2004 lists and prompted Zach to buy the record. I was definitely more than into hip-hop than him at the time but hadn't heard much of DOOM yet. When [Madvilliany] hit us it blew our minds. It was dissimilar annihilation I had ever heard before. I went as deep equally I could into the DOOM earth after that.
Information technology's still arguably my favorite album of all fourth dimension. The tape was e'er so cinematic to me and innovative in ways that really expanded my view of what music could be. The "Bistro" interlude has ever been so funny to me: "Alive on the beats, we have the one and but Madlib. We also have King Geedorah on the mix. Yesterday'due south New Quintet's hither. Viktor Vaughn, Quasimoto. And I'm your host, The Supervillain." He just shouted himself, Madlib, and and then two alter egos for each of them. Information technology'southward performance fine art. I'll never go over "Fancy Clown," a diss rails from one change-ego to the other, calling himself out for sleeping with his girl. "At present you apologize, that'southward what they all say. You lot wasn't sorry when you sucked him off in the hallway. But accept it your mode, raw — no foreplay. That's y'all if you want a dude who wear a mask all day." What rapper is going to write a song dissing himself? Information technology'south brilliant.
Of class I was captivated by the technicality of his rhymes and his unmatched ability to weave through a beat, simply it's the characters and the plots that really pulled me in. I took a form my senior year of high school with an English teacher called "Jazz to Hip-Hop" and the final assignment was to write about your favorite record. It was super open up-ended and I decided to substantially write Madvilliany fanfiction — Madvillainy: The Music —imagining a gritty, empty off-broadway theater where DOOM and Madlib were performing the record. I was really in awe of the world DOOM congenital. I still am.
Pink Siifu (Rapper)
Source: Creative person
Maaaannnn, I got into DOOM like sophomore year — english class messy ass binder. Started writing poetry as well at that time and my nigga Conquest put me on to Madvillainy. Life Changing. I had already heard of Madlib and heard a few beats, only this was my first fourth dimension playing a full album he was role of as well. Bro only said how he felt and what we all idea of on some insecurity just laughing-off-your-pain type shit. It'due south similar a comedian making a comic book in front end of you in the studio merely that nigga tin also produce. And then getting into Special Herbs, MM..Food, Operation: Doomsday, Dangerdoom, and JJ DOOM fabricated everything else brand sense. To me, at least, as a child.
AKAI SOLO (Rapper)
Source: Artist
I got into MF DOOM around my freshman year of higher. I had heard his name in my peripheral for a while but never pigeon in. I was only getting my anxiety wet with rapping seriously and someone compared me to him. That was the concluding straw that penetrated my bastion of neglect. The commencement album I listened to was MM.. FOOD. I fell asleep to that album, woke upward and started my morning with information technology. The entire experience blew my mind considering for the first fourth dimension since Kid Cudi I had plant another rapper that felt as strange and alone as I feel to this mean solar day. His arroyo to rap in my opinion represented a about perfect balance of world-building, wordplay, metaphoric authority, sincere weight. He had a wonderful vocabulary just he did non need to be overbearing with verbiage to showcase skill. He showed me what controlling ane's chaos can wait similar even upward until the very end. Even when I found out we have the same name, information technology was a pleasant surprise, seeing as I usually come across bums with it. DOOM was a truthful anomaly that I will continue to acuminate my sword against for eternity.
Michael Christmas (Rapper)
Source: Creative person
My memory is super fuzzy on the verbal historic period I was just I know I was in like seventh or eighth grade. I merely call up I was super young, and I saw The Cool Kids do an interview where, I believe, Mikey [Rocks] told the interviewer Chuck [Inglish] had put him onto MF DOOM and he'd been bumping information technology heavy. Those guys are two more idols of mine so when I knew they were amazed by this guy, too, I'm similar, "man he's really like your favorite rapper's favorite rapper." I know some of the first songs I recorded in high school were inspired by DOOM. Even the beats. I used a few DOOM beats on my first record. The Supervillain has been my teacher for as long as I tin remember and still is. The reclusiveness homo, the story, the bars especially. I was like the biggest nerd about it too and I don't care.
I recall Doomsday and "One Beer" probably the first joints I heard. I loved MM.. FOOD and Doomsday, but Madvillainy inverse my whole shit. I used to play that anthology on repeat on my stepdad's loud donkey crib sound system all twenty-four hours. I would end songs midway through and go to the computer, look up the instrumental to a articulation on the album and then write to it. I wrote this song called "The Claw" over the "All Caps" beat out. I was smitten, bro. I wanted to be the rapper that made Madvillainy. [I] just couldn't fathom being that talented, weird, and yourself all at once. More than than the music, though, was the fact that my homies didn't really listen to him. It's my own secret healing potion, man. DOOM was that Lil evil smirk you get when you feel similar being mischievous. But so clever.
The Villain origin story was so wild to me that when I first heard information technology I didn't really fifty-fifty believe information technology. And too the mask. It was all so baroque but cool. I was a piddling child so this non merely a rapper to me this is a living, breathing comic volume anti-hero. He was too never in the public eye like that, and then it'due south similar, "damn what's he doing right now?" You imagine him in an evil lair plotting. That'due south and so dope to me. Even when I heard about his passing, I was like, "nah, he's in a cavern correct now with a hologram globe spinning and he's watching us all cry with a malicious grin."
Nappy Nina (Rapper)
Source: Creative person
My younger brother Théo Manner introduced me to MF DOOM in 2004. I retrieve him having Mm..Food and Madvilliany on his one-time non-an-iPod-ass MP3 histrion with those horrible wire headphones that broke every two seconds. Even with that audio quality, he pulled me in. DOOM could convey that he didn't take himself too seriously merely was easily the best. His talent seemed like water to him and he was always spilling information technology everywhere. DOOM made cohesive art pieces with his music, soundscapes that actually brought you lot into his earth and fabricated you stay there for the whole album.
Joseph Chilliam (Rapper)
Source: Artist
I first got into MF DOOM later on watching The Boondocks. They used Madvillainy as the soundtrack for the unabridged episode. When I heard those beats and that monotone donkey voice I was baffled. How practice I non know who this person is already? I dearest this. I spent weeks trying to rail all these songs down.
When I heard the piano roll at the beginning of "Raid," everything that happened subsequently information technology was similar a shotgun to the heart, man. I knew I just discovered gold. Once I finally did track down the album, I studied it like the Bible. I never heard anyone rap similar that. I didn't even know it was possible. Hearing DOOM rap was like when Galileo [Galilei] was trying to tell everyone well-nigh the world revolving around the sun. I was in disbelief.
The introduction was so intense for me considering I had been hearing about DOOM for years. The name e'er intrigued me, and how I heard people talk near him, he really was a folklore legend. And it being a random song on The Boondocks was an unbiased introduction to information technology. No one raps like DOOM, and then the moment you hear information technology, whether you like information technology or not, you're similar, "What the fuck is that?"
Illustration by @popephoenix for Okayplayer
Source: https://www.okayplayer.com/originals/mf-doom-rappers-producers-influence.html
Belum ada Komentar untuk "I'd Bet on Doom Vs Any Rapper in a Beef"
Posting Komentar