So a few years ago I listened to an album called
Madvillainy, by the hip hop duo Madvillainy, consisting of Madlib (producer and occasional rapper) and MF DOOM (rapper and occasional producer). I played it in the background and thought it was pretty good, but didn't really pay much attention and consequently I never ended up listening again. Until as I got deeper into the lyricism and technical side of rap, and MF DOOM's name just kept on coming up until I decided I had to revisit and figure out what he was all about. So listen I did, and his insane rhyme schemes, confidence, interesting flow, and Madlib's fantastic production sucked me in. I was impressed by tri-syllabic rhyme schemes throughout songs, then this fucker goes and casually drops eight-syllable rhymes mid-song and my brain just sort of melted. I listened to Madvillain a dozen or so more times over the next couple weeks before deciding "hey, I'm gonna download MF DOOM's entire discography", including collaborative albums.
So, basically, this is my list of MF DOOM's works (on which he raps, not including his 9 or so instrumental albums).
Artist: MF DOOM
Title: Operation: Doomsday
Genre: Underground hip hop / jazz rap
Release: April 20, 1999
A great start to the mythology of DOOM, an album where he establishes his supervillain persona and first really flexes his talents as a producer. Much of the production and mixing is a bit rough, but still an interesting mix of 90s hip hop and jazz. The more experimental tracks (like "Tick, Tick...", which has a constantly-shifting tempo) end up being my favorites, but it's overall my least favorite solo album of his. There are fantastic tracks, but most are just passable. He hadn't quite found his footing with complex rhyme schemes and layered story-telling yet, either, though even at that point he still outperformed 99% of rappers.
Artist: King Geedorah
Title: Take Me to Your Leader
Genre: Underground hip hop
Release: June 17, 2003
The start of DOOM's most prolific period, in which he releases six albums in three years. Also the beginning of his use of aliases; he only has two albums as "MF DOOM", and almost every collaborative album takes on a unique name for itself. "King Geedorah" is the name he uses when he performs with a group he used to be in, the Monster Island Czars (M.I.C.), but this release was essentially him producing a bunch of songs and his group rapping over them. Of the 13 tracks on the album, he performs on only four. While his appearances are few, each one is fantastic, showcasing how much his cadence and writing have solidified in the four years since
Doomsday. Most of the tracks are great (minus "Krazy World", which sucks shit); their greatness is mostly thanks to his tight production, not really the decent-but-mostly-forgettable rappers in his crew.
Artist: Viktor Vaughn
Title: Vaudeville Villain
Genre: Underground hip hop
Release: September 16, 2003
On this album, DOOM establishes a new alias: Viktor Vaughn. Viktor is a high-school student with aspirations of being a supervillain of DOOM's caliber. The album is much more narratively focused than much of his work prior. Viktor is more frenzied, frantic, and desperate to prove himself; a departure from the calm, confident cadence DOOM had cemented with the last few albums. It's also where his complex rhyme schemes really start to shine, laying it on heavy with lines like "for a buck, they'd likely dance the Jig or do the Hucklebuck / To Vik it's no big deal, they're just a buncha knuckle-fucks" and "quit your bitchin' or get BLAUW in your babble-box / punishment for drysnitchin', now eat this Travel Fox". The production on the album is still wonderful, but mostly takes a backseat to the narrative and wordplay DOOM wants to focus on. That being said, the closing track, "Change the Beat", puts both aspects on display with beats and cadences that change several times throughout the song, growing in intensity. One of my favourite DOOM albums.
Artist: Madvillain
Title: Madvillainy
Genre: Jazz rap / experimental hip hop
Release: August 3, 2004
Widely considered DOOM's finest release and, by some, one of the greatest hip hop albums ever made. I'm inclined to agree with both of those statements. This is one of those rare albums where every single time I think about listening to a song off it, I want to just listen to the entire album from start to finish. There's no filler. Every single song is finely tuned, expertly produced by Madlib (sometimes with DOOM's assistant, but the album is mostly DOOM rapping while Madlib produces) and masterfully carried by DOOM. A kinda interesting note, too, is that most of the features on the album are actually just alter egos of Madlib and DOOM. It has some of his finest rhymes (Figaro opens with an eight-syllable rhyme) and indisputably his most confident flow. He sounds like a supervillain who has nothing to prove, reveling in his own knowledge that nobody is any match for him. It's the greatest album in terms of the sum of its parts, but it's hardly the peak of his lyrical dexterity, which only improves as time goes on.
Artist: Viktor Vaughn
Title: Venemous Villain
Genre: Underground hip hop
Release: August 3, 2004
This album is generally not very well-received, thought to be one of DOOM's worst offerings, and while I can see the reasoning I personally enjoy it quite a bit. The production isn't as interesting, but it's still solid and it complements the somewhat more frenetic pace of Viktor's rapping. I don't have a ton to say about this album, since most of my reasons for enjoying it slightly more than
Vaudeville Villain are just that it's a really fun record, but it is probably one of his weaker ones musically.
Artist: MF DOOM
Title: MM..Food
Genre: Hip hop
Release: November 16, 2004
This album, hoo boy. This is where DOOM seriously got nuts with his rhymes, lacing every single line effortlessly with schemes and alliteration, steering you in one direction and then swerving into another when you least expect it. It's a few other milestones, too. It's his last album under the MF DOOM name, and it's the album where he really establishes his knack for skits made up of samples and music. There's a solid 8-minute section in the middle of the album that's purely skits overlaid on instrumentals, and there are more skits scattered throughout tracks. Of its 50-minute runtime, I'd wager about 15-20 minutes of that is skits. Now, they're not your standard hip hop skits; he doesn't speak on them, they're entirely made up of chopping up and reorganizing samples of TV shows, movies, commercials, and laying them out in such a way that they build on the mythos of MF DOOM, characters speaking of him and gossiping. A sample thread that runs through the album is of a Fantastic Four episode, more or less squaring them as his main enemy for the work. Playing into that, he features a rapper called "Mr. Fantastik" on one of his songs. Mr. Fantastik was actually featured in a song on
Take Me to Your Leader as well. He's one of my favorite artists DOOM has worked with because they bounce off of each other so well, which is a shame because nobody knows who the fuck he is. His only appearances ever are on those two DOOM tracks, which leads some people to wonder if he's DOOM with an altered cadence and pitch-shifted vocals, or if he's really just some great rapper that only ever wanted to write two verses. It's terrible.
Anyway, my favorite track is one of the openers, "Beef Rapp", which is basically him mocking the state of modern rap. He tears into rappers walking around shirtless, touting their image over their talent ("yuck, is they rhymers, or strippin' males? / out of work jerks since they shut down Chippendales / they chippin' nails; DOOM, tippin' scales / let alone pre-orders counted off the shippin' sales"). Anyway, it's a fantastic album and likely the second-best right after
Madvillainy.
Artist: DANGERDOOM
Title: The Mouse and the Mask
Genre: Underground hip hop
Release: October 10, 2005
This album is a really weird one. It's MF DOOM and Danger Mouse—a producer known for very, very sample-heavy music—made almost entirely from music pulled from Adult Swim shows, which DOOM raps over. Dialogue from shows is included, as well as newly-recorded dialogue just for the album, and almost every song strongly references those same shows. It's bizarre, but damn good. It's also, by far, DOOM's most poppy effort. "Benzi Box (feat. CeeLo Green)" could very easily have been on the radio had anybody in the world known about this album. I don't love it, musically. I appreciate how the samples are built and work out, and DOOM's flow and rapping are top-notch, but it's just such a strange, disorganized effort that I find it hard to really get into. Maybe that will change over time, but for now it's one of my least favorites.
Artist: DOOM
Title: Born Like This
Genre: Hip hop
Release: March 24, 2009
DOOM's first album in four years, and his first album with the MF dropped. Where was he? Who the fuck knows. Also, even more sadly, his final solo album. It's weird to talk about DOOM records that aren't as well-received as the rest, since even the worst of his works is still a solid 7/10 critically, but this is one of those that a lot of fans didn't love when it came out, and even though critics like it it's not considered one of his best. Which, to me, it's one of his best. He's back in the producer's seat (co-producer for some tracks) and he's back with a fervor unlike DOOM, his calm cadence often giving way to something more frenzied and energetic. He seems as if he has something to prove after being away so long, to show that he's still "got it", and by God does he do that and then some. The album has a very constant narrative of DOOM's return and the havoc that ensues of it, and it feels sometimes like almost every other word on the entire album rhymes with something else—especially on "That's That", a track bound to make your head spin trying to keep up. I care more about the technical side of rap than most do, which is, I guess, why I'm drawn so powerfully to this record. It's fantastic.
Artist: JJ DOOM
Title: Key to the Kuffs
Genre:Alternative hip hop
Release: August 20, 2012
A decent output that made me wish DOOM would put himself back into the producer's seat. You sort of settle into his style and take it for granted until he's rapping over somebody else's. I haven't mentioned it up until now, but DOOM's cadence is a strange thing. He often oversteps boundaries, to the point it's hard to tell where one bar ends and the next begins. Generally a "bar" in hip hop is four beats, where a rapper sets up a rhyme scheme and continues it on the next. If two bars are "1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4", he'll often end a bar on the second "1" or "2" and then begin the next on "2" or "3". His style is predicated on the unexpected. Most rappers you can read their lyrics, hear a beat, and know how they're going to deliver them. With DOOM, it's always a mystery. That's his foundation, and his own production as well as the production of those who work well with him (Madlib being the best example) are based on that same concept. You don't know where the beat's going to go, you don't know how he's going to ride it, and it makes for a much more engaging listen than any other rapper's work. When he's rapping over pretty generic rap beats, like those made by Jneiro Jarel here, it just feels...wrong. So wrong.
Artist: NehruvianDOOM
Title: NehruvianDOOM
Genre: Hip hop
Release: October 7, 2014
Oh, hey, speaking of DOOM being in the producer seat...
I was disappointed to find out this is pretty much DOOM producing an album for Bishop Nehru, an up-and-coming teenage rapper. DOOM himself only appears on the album's final three tracks. That said, it's exciting to hear anything produced by DOOM, really, and Nehru is a very, very talented kid. I just wasn't as engaged as I'd hoped to be. His rapping was fine, his rhymes were good, the beats were great, but it just didn't really come together until the last song. I didn't realize until listening through this, but DOOM doesn't really do hooks or choruses for the most part. He tends to prefer rap from start to finish, with shorter songs as well. Which is fantastic, because rap hooks are very rarely any good. The last track exemplified this, keeping it concise and powerful. Here's hoping DOOM does more production in the future.
Artist: CZARFACE & MF DOOM
Title: CZARFACE Meets Metal Face
Genre: Hip hop
Release: March 30, 2018
The final album in our journey and DOOM's first album after his son passed away in 2017 at the age of 14. Many artists would go into a slump after such a tragedy, but it just seemed to inspire DOOM to dig deeper into darker facets of his mind and use them in his music. I wasn't honestly expecting to like this as much as I did, given I hadn't heard much fanfare. But CZARFACE is a more interesting group than I expected, consisting of Wu Tang's Inspectah Deck, producer 7L, and Esoteric, a rapper I generally enjoy listening to. The music is interesting and, though the album lags in the second half, it never gets boring. All three rappers hold their own, trading verses and trying to one-up another over and over. It leads to an entertaining clash of styles and a very unexpected collaboration. Not in my favorites of his work, but I'm glad to add this to my Playlist of DOOM.
Alright, well, that's the end of DOOM's main work. I'm going to go on and dig into EPs and his instrumental series, but I don't think I'll chronicle it here. That was my main adventure, everything else is going to be just unearthing any gems I didn't get to. Sorry if you read all that. Thanks for the patience.