MF DOOM, one of my favourite rappers, died in October of 2020; it was only made public on New Year's Eve. I've had this article of reminisces from fans, friends and collaborators sat waiting to be read on my Kindle since not longer after, but never got round to reading it for whatever reason. On that aforementioned sleepless night I finally made time for it and was glad I did. This anecdote from Questlove is undoubtedly the highlight of the piece for me, for all kinds of reasons:
"It was the Voodoo record-release party for D’Angelo [in 2000], and Mos Def showed up in his kitted-up, chauffeur-driven van with music blasting. He rolled down the window and said to me, 'Yo, you gotta get in here.' I tried to convey to him that Mark Ronson and I were DJ-ing the party, but he was like, 'No, man. We gotta have a discussion.' I was preparing myself for some kind of deep talk, but he just started preaching the gospel of DOOM. I’m talking a 40-minute monologue, almost something like a Jehovah’s Witness would preach, trying to convert me to a new religion. He was like, 'Do you understand the majestic gift that is Operation: Doomsday?' At the time, I had been listening to it with a different set of ears. [I said] “Oh, is that Zev Love X’s project?'
"Before Mos turned me around, my early thoughts of Operation: Doomsday, and skimming through it, were, It’s post Wu-Tang; the loops are sloppy. Anita Baker and J.J. Fad? C’mon now … I can’t spin this in the club. My initial response was more scoff than whoa. Mos was not going to give up. He memorized that whole album like his life depended on it. He memorized it like my life depended on it. He made me listen to 'Rhymes like Dimes' three times over. He was determined to convince me that it was the dopest shit out. He kept breaking it down to me until he finally planted the seed in me."
That whole scene is just highly entertaining. Mos Def with his kitted-out car, preaching the gospel of DOOM, the phrase "we gotta have a discussion." Later in the article Questlove does a successful job of conveying one of the lesser-explored appeals of DOOM, a rapper whose apparent qualities are abundant (the Dr Doom mask, the completely unique flow and war chest of references/rhyme schemes unlike anyone else before or since, his equally idiosyncratic samples and producing style, the innumerable pseudonyms and side-projects):
“I did my homework during the next six months and realized that the new persona was DOOM’s way of coping with Subroc’s death. I didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history, and [the late producer J] Dilla had already done this with me on Madlib. When I realized that what DOOM was doing was therapy for tragedy — it had been so long since I had seen somebody in hip-hop not using it as a means of escape, or survival, or monetary means to get to the next level.”
What he's referencing there is DOOM's previous life, as a sidekick to eighties hip-hop trio 3rd Base and then as a member of KMD, which ended when his cousin and KMD co-conspirator was hit by a car and killed. There was a period where he disappeared from view and, when he returned, he'd abandoned his Zev Love X persona and was hiding behind a mask. In the years following, he'd try on any number of other aliases, including an album as King Ghidorah (the three-headed enemy of Godzilla) and Viktor Vaughan, a riff on the alter-ego of Doctor Doom, each with distinct personalities, back stories, and rap styles. DOOM's music is rarely, if ever, maudlin, but the angle of retreat and reinvention after tragedy is not one I'd factored into his work before. RIP to the Villain. I loaded Operation: Doomsday, Born Like This and Take Me to Your Leader onto my phone for a walk to Highgate cemetery and had a bloody good time.
