MF Doom hardly come sloppy

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

At one time—probably around the release of the landmark Madlib collaboration Madvillain—MF Doom was probably the most cult-followed MC in America: a ’90s comer (part of K.M.D.) whose career was truncated by tragedy (brother killed in car accident) and corporate truculence (album Black Bastards too scary a cover to release) and who disappeared to drift the New York City night and then reappeared with Operation: Doomsday and a mask at every appearance then on. He rapped with a marblemouth growl and Naked Lunch ethos and flow—abstract phoneme tangles like “hardly come sloppy on a retarded hard copy” obscuring murky philosophical depth—and he cultivated and/or enjoyed a certain reserved mystery even after Cartoon Network’s high-profile Dangerdoom project (with Dangermouse, then probably the equivalently culted post-Grey album producer). And now that there are three promisingly legendary titles dangling Doom’s name—a new K.M.D, the Ghostface collab Swift and Changeable, and the super-secret Madvillain 2—Doom himself may be transcending toward the phantasmal per accusations that recent Doom shows on both coasts have had an impostor behind the mask lip-synching to a CD. So now Doom isn’t even Doom anymore? Some say rip-off (“That’s what you get for jumping on the bandwagon!” warned one writer) but it’s sort of fulfilling—once a man, now a mask, and so the comic-book story finishes off.

DEEP URBAN BREAKS PRESENTS MF DOOM, HAIKU D’ETAT, CASUAL, ELIGH, 2MEX, SCARUB, PARALLEL, GASLAMP KILLAH AND DREZ MON 9PM | $30-35 | VISIT WEBSITE FOR EVENT LOCATION AND DETAILS | PROJECTSWEATSHOP.COM

Tags: hip hop, Los Angeles, madvillian, mf doom