MF DOOM — Doomsday

I. The Finest

Let’s start with the story of this twenty-two-year-old kid, Daniel Dumile, nicknamed Zev Love X.

It’s 1993. Zev’s part of this conscious, intelligent, everything-mainstream-media-wants-you-to-belive-hip-hop-is-not hip-hop duo called KMD with his younger brother, DJ Subroc. They’re both super well-read, into heavy lit, comics, history, what-not, and are making waves in New York’s hip-hop scene. Their second album is about to drop, and everyone is super-excited about it.

But then, Subroc is killed in a car accident. He’s only nineteen. By early 1994, the label drops Zev¹, mainly due to controversy over the cover of the album². Devastated, demoralised, he spends the next four years “damn near homeless, walking the streets of Manhattan, sleeping on benches”, “recovering from his wounds” and swearing revenge “against the industry that so badly deformed him”³.

II. The Time We Faced DOOM

Meanwhile, in New York City’s Empire State University, a young, brilliant student, Victor Von Doom, is attempting to construct a machine to communicate with his dead mother, Cynthia, a witch who was slain by evil supervillain, Mephisto. Fellow student, Reed Richards, sees a calculation error in Victor’s models, and tries to warn him against building it. Victor nevertheless perseveres, partly due to his disdain for Reed, whom he considers an unworthy rival. However, Reed is right about there being an error in Victor’s calculations. This error results in a catastrophic explosion that permanently disfigures Victor. He is also expelled from the university.

Ashamed, and baying for revenge, Victor travels to a Tibetan monastery to learn the ways of a mysterious order of monks. After gaining mastery over their skills, he turns on them, making them his servants, forcing them to forge him a mask and a suit of armour. With his new suit, he returns to New York to complete his project, to defeat Reed Richards, and to become all-powerful. The masked supervillain is called Dr. Doom, and Reed Richards goes on to become Mr. Fantastic, the leader of the Fantastic Four.⁴

III. Open Mic Nite, Pt. 1

In 1997, a new rapper emerges in the underground hip-hop scene of New York. He freestyles at the Nuyorican Poets Café in the Lower East Side. And he’s very good. There’s just one weird thing about him. He always raps with a stocking covering his face. For some reason, he’s always rapping in cognito. But he’s very good, so he’s quickly signed on to an underground hip-hop label — Fondle ’Em Records. Between ’97 and ’98, he puts out three singles, and starts to make a name for himself in the underground.

IV. Deep Fried Frenz

Inspired by the story of Dr. Doom, the stocking-faced rapper comes up with a super-villainous alter-ego: MF DOOM — metal mask, metal fingers, metal armour. MF DOOM is a supervillain with a plan to take over the world.

Behind the suit is revealed to be Zev Love X. And MF DOOM’s arch-nemesis? The music industry that destroyed him.

V. Doomsday

Doomsday is a pretty chill song given its emotional backstory. Its wickedly funny, and rife with puns and epic wordplay. And more-or-less devoid of cold cynicism. But at its key moments, for instance in its chorus, you can see how emotional Operation: Doomsday really is for DOOM.

On Doomsday. / Ever since the womb til I’m back where my brother went / That’s what my tomb will say. / Right above my government, Doom will lay / Either unmarked or engraved, hey, who’s to say?

It is impossible to separate the art from the context of the artist and his/her life. And by this count, Doomsday is no ordinary comeback track, and Operation: Doomsday is no ordinary comeback record. Doomsday is, unabashedly, a comeback track about coming back. It’s proof that, for an artist, the comeback itself is an artform. While Daniel Dumile might not have been able to rap about his experiences freely, a carefully crafted alter-ego could rap about his.

At its heart, Doomsday is a darkly magical Roman à clef⁵. The story it tells is of a supervillain’s comeback from overwhelming odds, and the supervillain’s drive to keep on fighting until the end. And because you hear the unvarnished story from the supervillain, something Daniel Dumile might not have been able to do, you appreciate the record more, and you understand Daniel Dumile better.

VI. Supervillain Theme

Now here’s the genius of it all.

Apart from the emotional statement the alter-ego, the project, and the song makes, they also make a strong artistic one about celebrity culture. In DOOM’s own words⁶:

There was a time in hip hop when things started going from my point of view more towards what things look like as opposed to what they sound like (…) But what I’m doing is coming with the angle that it doesn’t matter what the artist looks like, it’s more what he sounds like. The mask really represents rebelling against trying to sell the product as a human being. It’s more of a sound. At the same time, it’s something different and it fits with the theme of the rebel, the villain. He don’t care about the fame; that shit’s of no consequence, it’s more the message of what’s being said.

This is, in a way, DOOM’s statement against his arch-nemesis — the music industry.

Celebrity worship is a weird side effect of our Americanoid lives. In few other places is this obsession more pronounced than in the world of rap. Some commentators will talk about how that’s a natural consequence of the conditions many rappers overcome to get to the top. And those commentators would be right. Other, mostly racist commentators would talk about a lack of values in the rap community. Those commentators would be wrong. But this isn’t a conversation about that.

The kicker is this:

Is the fact that I’m making such a big deal about the mask proof that we always cling on to some image of the artist as a product? Is this desperation to understand more about the human behind the mask the exact same impulse that leads us to scroll to the bottom of Wikipedia pages to find out if a singer’s been divorced, or if an actor’s gay, or if a Prime Minister is thought to have had an affair? Does MF DOOM’s hiding Daniel Dumile behind Zev Love X behind MF DOOM pique the curiosity of folks like me? Is it all a ploy?

As TheCompanyMan would say, I don’t have the answer to these questions.

¹ Or KMD to be more accurate.

² Here it is.

It was the album cover’s artwork depicting a cartoonish Sambo-like character hanging from a gallows that caused the hubbub. The album was pulled from many record stores. The crew that got its start with Caucasian sensations 3rd Bass now espoused a more militant racial attitude (…) K.M.D’s heartfelt and political expressions would go mostly unnoticed.

— Allmusic

³ Only read this if you’re desperate to be some sort of completionist like me: the Wikipedia article.

⁴ I’m not a really a fan of Marvel. If you want a fully detailed backstory of Dr. Doom (I’m certain you don’t), you can check it out here.

⁵ From Wikipedia: a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction

⁶ More in this RBMA lecture.

⁷ An endnote: MF DOOM is one of my favourite rappers. And I hope I’ve not been guilty of dehumanising him to a certain extent due to his celebrity, and due to the character DOOM. An example? Last year, DOOM lost his fourteen-year-old son. To me, that’s tragedy striking again, and it fits into a narrative. It shouldn’t. DOOM is a human being. Or at least Daniel Dumile is. I hope things get better for him and his family.