60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Madvillain — “All Caps”

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

This week, Rob makes a solid argument that the coolest thing a person can do is watch cartoons and play pretend. He breaks down the many personas of Daniel Dumile, starting with Zev Love X and ending with his villain persona Madvillain. He argues that his best work was done with fellow children’s show lover Madlib before he is joined by rapper and podcaster Open Mike Eagle to talk about getting to collaborate with your favorite rapper and the appeal of concealing one’s identity as an artist.  Host: Rob Harvilla Producers: Justin Sayles and Olivia Crerie Additional Video Editing: Kevin Pooler, Julianna Ress, and Chris Sutton Guest: Open Mike Eagle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He spent years in exile, self-imposed exile, his empire in ruins, his confidence shattered, his face, his beautiful face disfigured in a horrible accident, a once famous and now broken man, unrecognizable to the world and unrecognizable to himself. He'd suffered unimaginable loss. He'd lost close family. He'd lost his musical soulmate. He'd fought the cruel and predatory music industry and lost nearly everything else. Now, in near total isolation, he battled his demons, his addictions, and he might lose that fight, too.

And yet he kept fighting. He physically rebuilt his own face piece by piece. He stared at himself in the mirror until he recognized himself again. He mourned the dead, but he also seized. He plotted, he schemed. He swore revenge on a fickle populace that claimed to love him but could never truly understand him. And in the late 90s, when the time came to strike back,

he burst back into public view and reclaimed the spotlight and unleashed his dastardly plan for total crushing world domination. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Gaines. In November 1999, country music megastar, Garth Brooks hosted Saturday Night Live and quite ominously introduced the musical guest. Mysterious brooding, smoldering, star-crossed pop music megastar, Chris Gaines. Two things you got to know. Number one, Garth Brooks has sold 162 million records all time. Second all time only to The Beatles with 178 million.

And he's just one guy, right? Garth Brooks can still sell more records than anybody you can think of, even if he'll only sell physical CD box sets in Walmarts or Piggly Wigleys or at car washes or whatever. Garth Brooks is permanently unfathomably huge and never more so than he was in 1999. Second thing you got to know is that Chris Gaines is Garth Brooks in a wig. I love it when he mumbles mysteriously through the verses here and then yells, hey, like somebody just towed his car. I am risking my life playing you footage of Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines on Saturday Night Live in 1999. This song is called Way of the Girl.

This footage has been thoroughly scrubbed from God's own internet. We ain't talking YouTube or peacock here. We're on the dark web now. Reddit. If Garth Brooks gets pissed at me for playing you this and personally burns my house down with me in it, please apologize to him for me and ask him to play unanswered prayers at my funeral. In 1999, at the very height of his powers, at empirically high, higher heights than virtually any single musician in world history,

Garth Brooks slapped on a jet black emo haircut wig and a soul patch and reinvented himself as Chris Gaines, an entirely fictional rock star with an incredibly convoluted fictional backstory. In September 99, Garth released a new album with the unwieldy title Garth Brooks Inn, dot, dot, dot, dot, the life of Chris Gaines. This record sold 2 million copies, which would be a huge success for virtually anyone else, but for Garth was a world historical catastrophe. This shit was flabbergasting.

Nobody understood what he was doing here, no matter how hard he worked to explain it. Garth made an entire fake VH1 behind the music episode about the completely made up life and career, of Chris Gaines. This is literally the first thing Chris Gaines says in it. He was a rocker who liked fast cars

and even faster women. Sex. That's the greatest thing about being a musician. That is Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines. You can tell he's Chris Gaines due to the wig and the sole patch and the bright red quarter zip sweater. That's Chris Gaines solemnly describing

the roots of his lifelong canonical struggle with sex addiction. That is a core tenet of the Chris Gaines persona. I watched this entire behind the music episode, and this was my reward. I just like women.

I love communicating with them, however that may be. But one man's communication is another man's fornication. I have been thinking about the behind-the-music narrator guy saying, but one man's communication

is another man's fornication. For the last 48 hours, I've been practicing saying that in my own behind the music narrator voice. I think I would be good at that job. And then sometimes I reverse it. I go, but one man's fornication is another man's communication,

even though that's not accurate. One man's fornication is also another man's fornication. Okay, real quick, the abridged fake Chris Gaines backstory, Born in Brisbane, Australia, raised in Los Angeles, sainted mother, domineering father. In high school, Chris and his best friend Tommy, they start a rock band called Crush, which Chris describes here as a, quote, real intelligent monkeys, a real intelligent Beatles kind of feel. End quote.

Crush become famous chart-topping rock stars, but then Tommy dies in a plane crash. Chris is devastated. And then Chris Gaines reinvents himself as a mysterious brooding, smoldering, star-crossed pop music solo megastar. His first blockbuster chart-topping solo album, all of this is fake, is called Straight Jacket. Two words. Straight as in straight as an arrow. Straight Jacket. What?

What? His second blockbuster chart-topping solo album is called Fornicopia. Cornucopia with an F. There's an album cover and you don't want to see it. Or anyway, I don't want to show it to you. That is an opt-in experience. Would you like to hear Garth Brooks say the word fornicopia out loud? You better prepare yourself.

It was Chris's sophomore album, an album called Fornicopia that came out. Oh, yeah, laugh. 14 million, that album was. In 1999, Garth Brooks also hosted a primetime hour-long NBC special, where he played a bunch of Chris Gaines songs and painstakingly explained the convoluted fake backstory of the Chris Gaines character to a live audience. I watched this recently on headphones on my laptop in the crowded waiting room of a Toyota service department while I got my many vans tires rotated.

and when Garth Brooks said fornicopia out loud, I laughed hard enough to draw attention to myself. I thought I was prepared for him to say that, and I was not. If you're watching this NBC special, it's Garth Brooks as himself with thinning tousled gray hair in front of a boisterous live audience that is both audibly thrilled.

It's Garth Brooks. and clearly terribly confused. What is Garth Brooks talking about? Notice that Garth can recite made-up Chris Gaines sales figures. Fornicopia, not a real album, sold 14 million copies. The convoluted fictional Chris Gaines' backstory goes on. He gets in a horrible car accident. He flips his Porsche or whatever in Malibu.

His pelvis is smashed. His jaws almost ripped off. His face, his beautiful face. has to be totally reconstructed. He finally gets treatment for sex addiction. His mansion in Malibu burns down. He discovers the love of one good woman. He heads down to Mississippi and undertakes a deeply personal search for the roots of rock and roll.

Etcetera. The Real Life, 1999 album Garth Brooks Inn, dot, dot, dot, dot the life of Chris Gaines is styled as a fake greatest hits album. And also as the pre-s soundtrack to a real-life. life Chris Gaines themed movie called The Lamb, possibly starring Garth Brooks, but that movie never gets made because the real life album flops because all of this is incredibly confusing. Two million copies sold ain't going to cut it, and the critics are unkind. Salon.com describes the Chris Gaines character as, quote, Ben Stiller impersonating prince, end quote. Rolling Stone says, quote, clearly this guy got

run over by the crazy truck, and I'm talking all 18 wheels." Variety refers to this whole fiasco as an alter ego trip. That's good. That's good. But you want to know the absolute weirdest part of the whole baffling, impenetrable Chris Gaines saga? The music itself is totally normal. This is my favorite Chris Gaines song. It is called Main Street. It's sounds like the wallflowers. Unprecedented country megastar, Garth Brooks, decides he wants to build a fictional, mysterious, brooding, smoldering, star-crossed, sex-addicted pop music megastar from scratch, and he puts on a jet black emo wig and a soul patch, and he makes himself sound like

counting crows, or maybe John Mayer or Richard Marks, or unplugged era Eric Clapton. And the crowd, in this NBC special, they're into it. Robust cheers, outstretched hands, etc. The crowd is totally willing to accept these songs as new real hit Garth Brooks songs. The crowd is just totally unable to process them as old fake hit Chris Gaines songs. There, that's as weird as the Chris Gaines album gets.

A song called Right Now, in which Garth Brooks raps, not really. He just sings a little faster about crack and the Bible and pipe bombs underneath the bleachers. And then he sings the chorus to get together by the Youngbloods, that famous 60s hippie song. But I don't think that's what anyone remembers now about the Chris Gaines album.

What most people remember now is the album cover. Garth Brooks, in the wig and the soul patch, his eyes smoldering behind the mysterious, ominous mask of his bangs. Garth Brooks would seem to prefer that this cover is all you remember. Famously, Garth Brooks' albums are not available on streaming other than on Amazon, but the Chris Gaines album is extra not available. You can find the Chris Gaines album on YouTube, maybe.

Of course, you can buy a used CD, but I believe Garth Brooks is on the record as preferring you not do that. This is all mostly a joke now. Any BuzzFeed type top 10 all-time rock and roll fiascos list, there's Chris Gaines. But I can still also genuinely admire the sheer confounding audacity of Chris Gaines, the heat check arrogance, the unprecedented superstar flex. What is the point of having pop stars if they're not trying baffling, ill-advised, catastrophic type shit? Are you up on the Janet Jackson Panther situation? I just heard about this.

Hanif Abdurikib, the great poet and author and friend of the show. Hanif was just talking about this on Instagram. I had no idea. So Janet Jackson in 1989, just as Garth Brooks is getting started, Janet Jackson puts out her super blockbuster album, Rhythm Nation 1814. Right? And she's starting a world tour. Her first tour as an ST.

all-time pop star. And Janet Jackson decides she wants a panther with her on stage, a real-life panther. So there's Janet Jackson on stage in Miami with a live panther, presumably in a cage or on a leash or something, right? Right. And you know what happens, right? The very obvious, inevitable, totally foreseeable thing happens. The panther pees all over the. the stage. The Panther pisses indiscriminately. You got Janet Jackson backup singers and dancers slipping all over the stage. So grudgingly, Janet Jackson is like, okay, never mind about the Panther, and somebody in the Rhythm Nation gets a mop, and that's the end of it. An all-time superstar heat check. Janet Jackson has arrived, because you have not truly arrived as an all-time superstar,

until you've attempted something ridiculous and failed spectacularly. Not to mention hilariously. What I will say about Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines, and I say this with the greatest of admiration, is that I see that Chris Gaines album cover now, and I detect the faint but proud scent of Panther urine. So, Garth Brooks tried the whole pop star alter ego. thing and he totally fucked it. That's just a fact. But one man's fornication is another man's

communication. I only played the games that I win at and stayed the same with more rhymes damn this way to skate cats. As a matter of fact, let me rephrase. With more vibes and ways to fillet filings of these days. So let's try this again. Let me rephrase. In 1997, the rapper and producer not previously known as MF Doom releases his self-produced debut 12-inch vinyl single. Three songs, dead bent, gas draws, and hay. Hay is my favorite. Hey, exclamation point. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

That's an old, tired cliche. The thing where a rapper wraps something and then goes, let me say that another way. That's kind of a cliche also. This is not that. None of this is any of that. Let's listen to this again. Let's all marinate. Let's really try to luxuriate in the astounding internal rhymes and bonus alliteration of,

as a matter of fact, let me rephrase, with more rhymes than ways to fillet felines these days. I only played the games that I win at and stayed the same with more rhymes, damn it's ways to skate cats. As a matter of fact, let me rephrase. With more rhymes and ways that I win, Unbelievable. Try to hear this the way you might have heard it in 1997. You pick up this 12-inch at, let's say, Fat Beats,

the super famous New York City record store. You buy this blind and unheard and unknown, just based on the record label. You buy this single because it's on the cool and prestigious Fondolum Records, an actual record label with a name I will never get over as long as I live. Shout out legendary DJ and fondle l'emona, Bobito Garcia. I don't know why he named his label that. Maybe you've heard the name M.F. Doom before. Maybe you're big into comic books

and you immediately grasp that M.F. Doom is explicitly modeled after infamous Fantastic Four Arch Enemy Doctor Doom. Or maybe not. His name aside, maybe you think you know who this rapper is and what his whole deal is, but probably you don't. And meanwhile, he's achieving total crushing world domination five seconds at a time. Who got more snobular flows the snouty nose and holds mics like he knows karate body blows. Holds mics like he knows karate body blows.

That's incredible. That would sound cool if any medium cool rapper said it. But this guy also says things that somehow only sound cool when he says it. Stuff like, for the record, this is some shit I just thought of,

y'all. For the record, this is some shit I just thought of y'all. It's science fiction that's not permissible in the court of law. That's also incredible,

somehow. The line, it's science fiction that's not permissible in no court of law should sound clunky and overwrought and yet doesn't.

There is some ineffable nonchalantly startling quality to this person's voice. The hyper-casual rasp, the Thunderbolt Deadpan, the endless symphonic technicolor vibrance of his monotone. There is no hook here. No chorus. No pop-oriented song structure. No ad-libs.

I did not realize until I read it somewhere. No ad-lips. No doubled voices. No studio tricks to feign emphasis or consensus or camaraderie. Just a random, disheveled loquacious. guy sitting next to you at the bar and talking your ear off. Just a mysterious, faceless man wrapping his ass off. Also, is that Scooby-Doo?

Yes, indeed. This man is wrapping his ass off while sampling a 1972 Scooby-Doo cartoon. The exact sample source is worth revisiting. Imagine watching this on TV and deciding to construct your entire nefarious world conquering new rap persona around it. Yes, if you're watching, that's the Adams family. If I were Scooby-Doo and I were unfamiliar with the Adams family, I'd go ooh and run away too.

Imagine hearing that hey and hey, Scooby, and using it to censor individual words whilst you wrap your ass off. Misbehaving rap stars, misdiment. Call me Mr. Ben. I'm at where your sister went. I'm at I'm at I'm at

I'm at where your sister went. Also, this guy in various songs under various guises, this guy's going to spend a lot of time talking about other people's bad breath. It's a pet peeve of his, I gather. I could go on

where this song, Hey, is concerned, and often I do, but give me one good zoinks and we'll get out of here. This place is filled with Pretender Willys One false move and get broke off like End of Phillies Zoinks Pretender Willys

One false move and get broke off like end of Phillies I could listen to this guy just say things all day And I become more fascinated with this guy The less I understand him The whole point of a well-deployed pop music Alter Ego is the uncertainty The confusion The initial total lack of backstory

or explanation. Chris Gaines didn't work because Garth Brooks over-explained it. That's one reason. It didn't work. Whereas this guy's about to build his case as one of the most beloved rappers in history because there is no real explanation for any of this beyond it's awesome.

Anyways, he'll clean up this song, Hey, and speed it up a little and put it out again in 1999. And in that version, the closing line about meddling kids will really pop. Unsettling bids. That's the real killer phrase in this whole song. If you're listening to this song for the first time and you get really into the Scooby-Doo of it all,

maybe you're smart enough to anticipate the meddling kids showing up somewhere, but no way you're prepared for him to rhyme meddling kids with unsettling bids. Who is this person? Who was this person? What happened to this person that turned him from that person into this person? How many people is this person?

How many heads apiece, on average, does all the different people this person is have? And what's the deal with the mask? His name is MF Doom. You spell that in all caps. Maybe you've figured out that part without being told. Or maybe you know it's all caps, because eventually, graciously, he told you that himself. Do it like the robot to headspin to boogaloo. Took a few minutes to convince the average boogaboo.

It's ugly like, look at you. It's a damn shame. Just remember all caps when you spell the man name. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 39th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s, colon the 2000s. And this week we are discussing all caps by mad villain. the dastardly duo of the rapper slash producer MF Doom and the producer slash rapper Madlib.

From their phenomenal joint 2004 album, Mad Villany. If you've heard this beat recently in a TV commercial for some artificial intelligence thing, I want you to forget you heard that and or forget I just reminded you of it. We'll be back after these commercial messages. How you doing? Real quick, this is a...

our ninth episodes so far also available on video. The video is optional, but, and I'm trying real hard not to read the comments. So I don't know how it's going for you, but here's how it's going for me. Look out. Top five worst things about being a video podcaster now. Here we go. Number five, too much shit in my house. What is all this shit? What am I supposed to put all this shit? I got key lights. I got Waffle lights. I got myriad bulky. trip over constantly. I got a table here loaded up with unsightly cables and power strips and whatnot. I got no room to maneuver in my own office. I have defiled my own inner sanctum. I got dust out the wazoo. There is cat hair on the teleprompter. Yo, number four,

unflattering screenshots of my face. Do not send these to me. I am aware of what my face does when I talk, and there is nothing to be done about it now. Number three, TikTok in general. Now I got to try to make social content. I got to put video clips from this show on TikTok, but I don't know how to use TikTok. And my clips, they get like 15 views total, and it makes me feel inept and angry and also ancient. Number two, I got hello Wi-Fi issues. I work out of my house, right?

I got a fancy camera. I got an SD card. And the camera recordings themselves, the digital video files this show generates, are now so large. It's like 40 gigs per episode of stuff I got to upload to the cloud. And the internet, the Wi-Fi in my house is so bad that if I want to send these files to my producers quickly,

I have to drive my laptop across town to my mother-in-law's house because she has much faster Wi-Fi than I do. To be clear, I love my mother-in-law very much, and I greatly enjoy her company, and it's nice to see her. Maybe I bring her some soup, et cetera, but I frankly resent the fact that the superior cable fiber Wi-Fi is available, in her neighborhood, but not in mine. And despite the fact that she can't log into Hulu without calling her daughter for help,

my mother-in-law can nonetheless upload in 30 minutes what I cannot upload in 24 hours. I cannot help but think that AT&T is antagonizing me personally. Also, confidential to T-Mobile. Thank you. And finally, the number one worst thing about. about being a video podcaster. You guessed it, nose hair. The best thing about being a video podcaster now

is now maybe you can just sit here with me and stare at the mad villainy cover. See, this is why I've got all this shit in my house. There are days when this is my favorite album cover ever. Today is one such day. Just a simple, ominous, black and white, ludicrously rad photograph of M.F. Doom, a.k.a. Daniel Dumalay, formerly known as Zevlove X, currently also known as Metal Face, Metal Fingers, Victor Vaughn, and my personal favorite, King

Giedera. For now, let's just call him Doom. All caps. So yeah, there's Doom, rap superstar, on the cover of Mad Villany, staring at you from inside the iconic eternal metal gladiator mask he never takes off in public. His eyes are just barely visible, but his eyes are staring comic book laser holes through you, whether you notice them or not. Eric Coleman took the cover photo. There's also a little orange box in the upper right corner. Jeff Jank, who designed the Mad Villainee cover. a Stones Throw Records co-founder and art director, Jeff Jenks, says he added the orange box because of Madonna.

Madonna's self-titled 1983 debut album is a black and white shot of her face with just a pop of color in the O in Madonna. Jeff says the O in Madonna is orange. It looks pretty clearly red to me, though then again, I'm not Stones Thro's Art Director. All-time great album cover regardless. All right, it is 1988. In the New York City rap duo third base, have a splendid, buoyant, brash, and yet modest little hit song on their hands called The Gas Face.

If you ever wondered what 1988 looked, sounded, and felt like, if you were super into hip-hop, this will give you a decent idea. In 1988, everyone danced like MC Search in the Gas Face video. Just trust me,

that next up done a special appearance by KMD's zev love X and here indeed we have a special appearance by the young rapper known for the time being as Zev Love X that's X evolves with a Z backward Zev Love X. Perkin is brim with a Z backward Zev Love X Perkin is brim to the rim of my cup. Don't tempt me you're empty, so fill her up. His name will change, his face will change. His tone will darken, villainously. But the astounding internal rhymes are there from the very beginning.

Daniel Dumalay is born on July 13, 1971. His mother is from Trinidad. His father is from Zimbabwe. And Daniel is born while his parents are visiting family in London. The whole born in London thing is going to be a huge unpleasant issue immigration-wise later in his life. But young Daniel and his four younger siblings are raised in Long Island, New York. In the late 80s, Daniel, now going by Zev Love X, and his younger brother, Dean Gleysway, aka DJ Subrock, they start a rap group called KMD, initially a trio with their friend Onyx the Birthstone Kid.

KMD stands for either causing much damage or a positive cause in a much damaged society. Causing much damage is better, or at least it's way simpler. KMD is going to be making some noise real soon, but here in 1988, the gas face is Zev Love X's big debut. My favorite part of his verse is just the way he says Sonoko. It's a gas station. It's a credit for unletter ass a no-go. KMD and third base is this ace in the hole.

I mean so. So make the gas face. Damn it, looks can kill. It's truly delightful, but just a little bit heartbreaking. How young and fun-loving and quote-unquote normal our young hero, Zev Love X, sounds and looks here. Just a rad, skinny, baby-faced teenager with glasses, goofing around with his friends and explaining the rad slang term he came up with.

That's a hit song now. The gas face is a mocking, contemptuous face you make at a person you dislike. You sort of grit your teeth and shake your head vigorously. Like, ow, ow. What nobody tells you about the gas face is it hurts. It physically hurts to do the gas face. I can feel my brain rattling around in my skull. Naturally, the fact that it hurts to do the gas face only heightens the insult, the contempt conveyed to the gas face victim.

Ingenious. KMD's debut album is released in 1991 and is called Mr. Hood. It is excellent and brash and youthful and buoyant and somewhat deceptively upbeat. Holy smokes. I see it's a jocle phones. Okay, jokes over, but still a cloak's over. Us with no love from no clover. This irritates ex, I was into my text, to erase one end word complex.

Some rock, it's the fuzz of what was, was, and then he decker, the joke song, cuz. I say deceptively because Zevlove X starts this verse with, holy smokes, an old-fashioned cousin to zoinks, I think, and then he rails passionately against racism. Holy smokes, I say it's a joke to make a mockery of the original folks. This song is called Who Me? The full title is Who Me, question mark, parenthesis, with an answer from Dr. Bert. Close parenthesis. That's Dr. Bert, as in Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street.

Yeah, the fundamental Saturday morning cartoons, silliness radiating off this person is there from the very beginning. On this KMD album, Mr. Hood, sub-rock handles most of the production, and Zevlove X does the best and most prominent pure rapping, as he does here on a catchy and extra buoyant tune called Peach Fuzz. The video's really fun, too. Bound the heads of my chinny, chin, chin, got many plus plenty. String by string, I think I count's like 20. If you loan me an ear, I'm returning with interest. If not, I'll simply twist your wrist, so listen up closely with thoughts to recruit me,

because I hope to gross like 10 set per group me. Not only if I had two Gs for strand, that's my anchor, banker, here understand. Now, there's plenty of vibrant and illuminating local detail here. Ask My Anchor Banker, he understands. Those were cheesy local TV commercials. And for part of the video, KMD are wearing the white headwaps of the Ansaru Ala community, the very complicated black Muslim group that Zev and Subrock were raised in. But yeah, big picture, this is a bouncy little song about struggling to grow a beard with a video

where our young heroes ride bikes and try to pick up girls. As debut albums go, it's oversimplifying things to compare Mr. Hood to De La Sol's three feet high and rising, which, okay, is a better and way more famous debut album, and as a group, De La Sol get a lot more time to evolve, to get stronger and sharper, so they can at least try to fight back against the predatory music industry that's so intent on stifling and overselling. simplifying them. As for KMD, tragically, what you hear primarily on this Mr. Hood album now is potential. You get a portal to a much simpler and brighter alternate universe where Zev Love X

maybe never needs a mask or any other alias at all. On April 23rd, 1993, DJ Subrock is hit by a car and killed while trying to cross the Long Island Expressway. He was 19. At Sub Rock's Wake, his devastated older brother and bandmate brings a boombox and plays songs from KMD's not yet completed second album, which includes a thumping, upbeat, an eerily prophetic song called It Sounded Like a Rock, in which Sub Rock promises to haunt us all. And he will. KMD's second album is called Black Bastards. The cover drawing depicts a redactress. The cover drawing depicts a racist sombo-type cartoon character hanging from a noose. As images go, as vicious, mocking, defiant, anti-racist images go, this feels pretty straightforward. But K&D's record label freaks out at the cover and shelves the Black Bastards album and drops the group, a group that now only consists of a still

grieving Zevla Vex. The BlackBastard's album does finally come out in the year 2000, but by then it's a weird moving but deeply disorienting afterthought, born into an entirely different universe, a multiverse, really. There is a profoundly uncomfortable June 1994 KMD feature in The Source magazine, written by the journalist and author Ronan Roe, where he interviews a grieving Zevlov X shortly before Black Basterds gets shelved. Ronan writes, quote, I ask if listening to and having to promote the Black

Bastards album is a bother. If hearing Subrock's voice doesn't reopen painful wounds. He leans forward in his seat. His voice grows a little more forceful. And Zev says, it seems like I'm listening to two different people to tell you the truth. I'm not even that

motherfucker from before. I don't know. Different times. What I'm doing now, creatively, is totally different. It's like him and me combined as one type shit." End quote. The article goes on, quote, it's like this. The physical body is not us anyway, Zev continues, equating visiting a grave to worshipping graven images. Subrock's presence is numinous, he tells me. So the whole physical form shit is mad whack. Zev pauses, toking on the blunt. He

knows that Sub Rock will live on through the good deeds he did in life, through his music and in people's loving memories, but still the pain is deep. After a second, Zev stares into his lap, shakes a Newport out of his pack, and says,

I feel like a fucking piece of bullshit. His face is a mask of torment. And quote, a couple years past. Daniel Dumalay drops mostly out of sight, and when he resurfaces, he's got a new name, the first of several new names, and if he gets his way, nobody's ever going to see his face again. On Tuesday, ever since the womb till I'm back with my brother went, that's what my tumor

say, right above my government, Dumelay, either unmarked to engraved, hey, who's to say? In 1999, M.F. Doom releases his debut full-length album called Operation Doomsday. That song is called Doomsday. There is fantastic internal rhyming there. Supreme Technical Excellence. Yes, fine, sure. Absolutely. Nothing else matters there. But ever since the womb till I'm back where my brother went. M.F. Doom wears a quite literal physical mask everywhere, always.

Per the great 2024 book, The Chronicles of Doom, Unraveling Raps Masked Iconiclast, written by S.H. Fernando Jr., Doom got his first mask from a 99-cent store, a plastic Halloween mask of the WWF pro wrestler Kane, spray painted with silver rustolium. But somebody sat on that mask during an early MF Doom video shoot. Holy smokes. Whatever embarrassing shit you've done in your life, at least you didn't accidentally sit on MF Doom's mask. The canonical, the more or less permanent MF Doom mask, is a 25-pound steel replica of a mask Russell Crow wore in the Oscar-winning 2000 film Gladiator,

welded and sanded and secretly internally padded and otherwise gradually modified, including a layer of chrome to deal with, you know, rust and whatnot. With this mask, M.F. Doom is now one of the most instantly recognizable rappers in history, and just as importantly, he is also one of the least recognizable rappers in history without it. He has a family, he has a wife and children, he has privacy. The mask grants him both near total anonymity and permanent. immortality, given that he raps like this all the time. between classical slapstick rappers need chapstick and the part where he rhymes alamo with tallyho.

Meanwhile, dig the absurdly tasty sample from the landmark 1981 smooth jazz as pop Quincy Jones album, The Dude. The rhymes like dime sample can turn water into cocaine. MF Doom is also your sole producer on this Operation Doomsday record. he's flipping Chadeh, he's flipping Steely Dan, he's flipping Scooby-Doo and Fantastic Four and various other cartoons. He is enrapturing and terrorizing the populace. Ultimately, under the alias metal fingers, M.F. Doom will release a 10-volume series of instrumental beats called Special Herbs. And that's a whole magnificent rabbit hole we don't have much time for, because I need to briefly introduce you to Daniel Doomil, Lays next major alias, King Gidera.

I'm not going to try to sell you on it being the deepest line in rap history, but Guitara has arrived, you guys can take five out loud each and every time I hear it. I can't explain it. It's a vocal tone thing, I guess. I can't explain it. It's a vocal tone thing, I guess. Okay, King Guitara, the spelling varies. King Guitara is a three-headed outer space dragon, serpent, giant monster, Kaiju situation, who made his film debut in 1964. He is Godzilla's mortal enemy. Mortal is the wrong word. He does not like Godzilla. When Daniel Dumley is rapping under the name King Gidera,

this song is called No Snakes Alive from the 2003 King Guitara album, take me to your leader. In the MF Doom universe, King Giedera, the three-headed Godzilla villain Space Dragon, transmits his raps telepathically to MF Doom, the guy in the mask, who then translates and physically audibly wraps those raps. The other thing I like about this song,

No Snakes Alive, is that it arbitrarily speeds up. It's an elemental type of follow. Sometimes spazz or wife like old shoddy. Might use karate. A giant's wide match with the golf style caps a max fly. Exact. Dole till a stack high. White, whole black guy.

The rap game, black eye. A giant three-headed space dragon, kicking Godzilla's ass while telepathically rapping sort of mellow type of fellow who sometimes spas on wife like Othello. Holy shit. So that's happening. Also in 2003, we get vaudeville villain, the debut album from Victor Vaughn,

the third major rapping Daniel Dumas. Alias, a younger, brashier, snottier, rapidy-wrapping persona based on comic book super villain Dr. Doom's alias, Victor Vaughan. But we'll meet Victor Vaughn the rapper in a second. Let's meet this guy first. Smoking on the freeze at 100 degrees. Never touch the breeze, just a sticky green leaves. Put it in the Dutch. It gets stuck on your touch. Whoa. Pack it in your bong, last long, have you on crash. Okay. This song is called greenery, and this guy's name is Quasimodo. That's one of this guy's names and two of this guy's voices. Here we have Otis Lee Jackson Jr., aka Quasimodo, aka the beat conductor,

aka the loop digger, aka yesterday's new quintet, that's his jazz group consisting of, presumably five versions of himself. But he is best known as Madlib. Madlib is born on October 24th, in the luscious beach town of Oxnard, California, 100 miles or so west of L.A. His father is a soul musician. His mother is a songwriter for his father. Mad Lib samples his first record when he's 11 years old. James Brown, doing it to death by the J.B.'s. Madlib and two of his friends form a young, brash, modest, fun-loving rap trio called Lute Pack,

who make their debut in 1993 on an Alcoholics record. The Alcoholics, K's instead of C's, are an extra fun-loving beer-drinking rap group from L.A. I saw the Alcoholics live in Cleveland, Ohio in the mid-90s on the Warped Tour. Can that possibly be right? I swear I saw the alcoholics and Rocket from the Crypt play back-to-back. If that sentence makes any sense to you, no, it doesn't. Lute Pack put out a few singles in a 1999 debut full-length album on Stones Throw Records, a very cool and prestigious L.A.-based record label.

Mad Lib becomes Stones Thro's resident Mad Scientist. He lives in the Stones Throw House slash headquarters, making beats all day in the basement, which is a former bomb shelter, literally called the Bomb Shelter. And in the year 2000, he makes his full-length debut as quasi-mobile. on a critically acclaimed album called The Unseen. The deal with Quasimoto is that Madlib comically pitch-shifts his voice and raps alongside himself, often about greenery.

This song, Greenery, is from the second Quasimodo album, released in 2005, and called The Further Adventures of Lord Quas. I'm playing you this song specifically because it features a third pitch-shifted Madlib voice, namely the guy here who goes, pass it around. Light it up. Roll it. Pass it around. The scientist is sound.

Check the rail. Come down. Look over here. Yeah, I would like that glass ball. A big blue glass one right there. I don't see it. Do you have the money for it? Right there to the left.

Okay. I love the pass it around guy very much. Oh, hello. Oh, yeah, the money for it? Oh, I'm pretty sure. sure that on this song Madlib is selling a bong to himself and then smoking weed with multiple iterations of himself. This guy in his stoned evil genius multiverse multitudes, this guy seems very much like MF Dooms kind of guy. And Zoinks, let's get these guys together already.

This song is called accordion. That's a sample from Daedalus, the underground rap, Luminary Daedalus, and that wheezing instrument you're hearing is not an accordion. But that's okay. I would honestly love to hear an argument that Mad Villany, the first and final proper album from Madvillan, the duo of MF Doom and Madlib, released in March 2004 on Stones Throw Records. I would love to hear someone argue that this is not M.F. Doom's best album and Madlib's best album. But I personally cannot make that argument because mad villainy is preposterously fantastic. Living off borrowed time, the clock ticks faster. The thing with Doom, the rapper, in any form, including the three-headed telepathic space dragon form.

The thing with him is you can revel in the silliness. and the bewilderment and the aliases and the rabbit holes. But you can also zoom all the way back into the molten human core of this person's being, which remains ever since the womb till I'm back where my brother went. And then you can zoom back out to the super villain cartoon character who's rhyming Kotex, Bo Flex, and Joe Tex.

When he at the mic, you don't go next. Leaving pussycats like why holes need Kotex. Exercise index won't need bow flex and won't take the one with no skinny legs like Joe Tex. That's the end of that song, accordion. Mad Villanese songs don't need hooks and choruses or discernible song structures, because every part of every song is the most important part. This song is called Meat Grindr. Jack LaLan is a famous fitness guru.

Rath of Kane is a Big Daddy Kane song, where he raps incredibly. fast, and on a fast track to half insane is a fantastic description of what it feels like to try to process all this. Still back in the game like Jack Lorain, think you know the name, don't rack your brain. On a fast track to half sane either in a slow beat or that's a speed or at the cane, latter, pain, throwing songs lit in the booth with the best host, doing bong hits on the roof in the West Coast. Doing bong hits on the roof in the West Coast.

You can picture Doom, Daniel, the singular human, on a rooftop in L.A. with Madlib, Otis, the singular human, smoking on those trees at 100 degrees. There is a human connection here, even if these two human guys aren't physically in the same room or even on the same coast for very long. Mad villainy, the album, can be a story about painfully human connections and disconnections. The 33 and a third book series, there's a great 33 and a third book about Mad Villanee, published in 2023 and written by Will Hagle. And like the Stones Throw Records guys argue amongst themselves now about who deserves credit for this record. And Doom's manager at the time, Waleigh-Shabash, she argues with the Stones Throw guys and says she deserves the credit. Also, in 2023, MF Dooms' widow, Jasmine Dumley Thompson, she sues Egon Olipat, former general manager of Stone's Throw, because he's in possession of 31 of M.F. Doom's rhyme notebooks. And that is a whole ugly, convoluted legal mess. That dispute was settled confidentially in 2025, and reportedly MF. Doom's widow got his notebooks back. There is copious backstory.

There is endless behind-the-scenes rancor and intrigue and sadness. Did I just obtusely mention that M.F. Doom died. M.F. Doom died on October 31, 2020. Though this was not publicly announced until December 31st, 2020. He was 49. He died on Halloween, and we found out on New Year's Day. You can miss him terribly and still be happy for him that he's back where his brother went. Or, or, never mind any of that.

Mad Villany is not a story about any of that at all. No, Mad Villany is the glorious comic book multiverse team-up between two all-time great rappers slash producers with multiple baffling electrifying aliases apiece and the resulting preposterously fantastic album does not take place on this planet or in this timeline or in any recognizable plane of existence at all. Live on the beats, we have the one and only Madlib.

How do you do? We also have King Gidro on the mix. Yesterday's new quintet is here. Mad Villany is one of these records where I have a new favorite part, a new favorite micro moments every time I hear it. Sometimes I walk around my house going, you know it's the best to watch out.

And sometimes I walk around my house going, Mara, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong. Marijuana, bong, bong. But right now it's this part. This song is called Bistro. It's the introduction to the album. It's track four. That's funny.

Bistro is a minute and seven seconds long. And it's just doom listing all the artists who contributed to this album. And they're all aliases of doom and Madlib. We also have King Giedera on the mix. I love the way he says that. Yesterday's new quintet is here.

That's Madlib's jazz group consisting entirely of himself. I suddenly find this moment, this bistro introduction, absurd and yet genuinely moving. Two guys who have imagined themselves as an infinite number of guys. Artists, superstars, supervillains, space dragons. Mad villainy is the glorious sound of an infinite number of panthers peeing on an infinite number of stages. The cartoonish audacity, the superhuman ingenuity that drives this one record by all these guys. Like Victor Vaughn.

Say a quick hello to M.F. Doom alias Victor Vaughn, the star of a couple great full-length albums who gets a song on Mad Villeney called Fancy Clown, in which he castigates his girlfriend for cheating on him with, you guessed it, M.F. Doom. It is two minutes and 10 seconds long. Objectively, the best part of this song is Don't Talk About My Moms, yo. Your mother, don't talk about my mom's, yo. Your mother, don't talk about my mom's, yo, is objectively the best part of all kinds.

Your mother, don't talk about my mom's, yo, is objectively the best part of all Caps. Although I've always been partial to the casual simplicity of hit it on the first try, villain, the worst guy. The drum loop is a sample of a 1974 song called Bumpin' Bus Stop by a group called Thunder and Lightning. I did not know that. And yet I always subconsciously suspected it. All caps is in a TV ad right now for some AI thing, right? And I don't mean to be preachy. or bitchy or nothing. I got no beef with technology as such, even if the Wi-Fi in my house sucks.

But I find the mad villain AI ad oddly singularly appalling. Insofar as my understanding is that AI is a computer trying to convince you that it's human. And so it's draining the world's oceans whilst barraging you with random facts and data and noise gleaned from humans. But you simply cannot fake. cannot synthesize. You cannot replace the all-to-human frailty and complexity and audacity and

ingenuity and interplanetary greatness. That resulted in the two people who made mad villainy by imagining themselves as way more than two people. You know? I guess what I really want to say about that ad is shah-l-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-hit. Allegedly, the investigation is still ongoing. In this pesky nation, he got's the best con flowing. The pot doubles. Not evil, he got troubles. Madman never go like snot bubbles.

I just picture M.F. Doom in his chrome-plated 25-pound metal mask going, Mad Men never like snot bubbles and leaving just a little bit of spit on the mask. There's still a little kid watching Scooby-Doo cartoons with his little brothers. and sisters lurking behind that mask. Some days I'm almost relieved that Doom doesn't have to live on this planet anymore. But every day I'm grateful that he and Madlib let us visit them on all of theirs. We are so honored to be joined once again by Open Mike Eagle, rapper and podcaster and comedian and friend of the program. His latest album is so great, it's called Neighborhood Gods Unlimited,

and you can catch him on tour very soon. Mike, thank you so much for being here. Oh, it feels so good to be back. It feels so good to be back. It's always nice to talk to you, Rob. I love the stuff you talk about. Well, thank you so much. Likewise, it's always wonderful to talk to you.

And I have to talk to you about Doom because, if I'm not mistaken, you have collaborated with Doom twice. You have two songs with Doom. Do I have that right? You do have that correct. Two songs with Doom. Two of my greatest life achievements. Okay.

And I am trying to remember, I think, did you ever talk to him? Did you ever meet him? I never talked to him nor met him. It was always through a mysterious connection of third parties every time. It was like I was doing a drug deal. I imagine that's certainly not unheard of, you know, as a rapper, jumping on another person song.

Like, how much harder. It's obviously I'm imagining you were very intimidated, to be honest. with Doom, but how much harder is it if you never talk to him, if you have no chance to build any kind of rapport? Does that matter when you're collaborating or not really? It doesn't matter a lot. Like, it does matter a little. I did feel more like, okay, I need to bring, you know, my fire and stuff, because it's not like I'm going to get to sit and chill with him and see what he responds to him, what he don't, or none of that. So it was just it all had to be in the raps.

And I just just had to sit and hope that the raps were good enough. Yes. Did you get, did you get any feedback afterward? No. No. Not at all. Okay. Okay.

None. Z, row. Yeah, actually, yeah. I've learned that. That's funny. I've learned that specifically in rap. Okay. If somebody doesn't say something bad happened, I should just

assume nothing bad happened. Okay. I'll get in my head about whether or not I've made a mistake or I've run a foul of somebody or I've, you know, I ticked somebody off. What I've learned, I think about stuff like that way more than other people do. Sure, sure. Okay, so thinking about it in terms of the Mad Villain album, like I know Doom and Madlib met in person and hung out a little bit and communicated a little bit between the two of them,

but not very often. I think the vast majority of the time, like, they're doing their own thing. They're both very mysterious, like, isolated figures. Like, for a full album like this, even in that situation, do you not need to be in the same room and have, like, that sort of mind meld? Like, when you listen to this album, does it feel like they weren't in the same room, or it feels like they were? Like, what's your sense of the rapport that they established, however, they went about establishing it?

In my mind, they are great for, they were. were great friends. In my mind, they were hanging out all the 2003 working on this record. And I don't know why I feel that way, but I do. I feel like so much of, so many of MF Doom's raps seem like they are in conversation with Madlib. Right, right. In the verses. It feels like he's talking, it feels like they're referencing inside jokes. Like it does to me feel as if they spent a lot of time together. So if I had been quizzed and asked if they'd spend a lot of time together, I would have said yes, but I guess I would have been wrong because I don't actually know. I think I did read somewhere that like on every other project, Doom is talking to himself,

in essence, or just to an imagined listener, but specifically on mad villainy, he is talking to Madlib. I think you're on to something there. And I think there's something, there's just such a rapport between them on that record. It does feel like they're bouncing ideas back and forth. It's like, like, Madlib flips an old jazz standard and then an old jazz standard starts playing. Like, there's just a lot of that interplay that I think you have to establish somehow. Yeah, and to me, like, I just have this vision of my mind of them, like, sitting on a rooftop

somewhere sharing a blunt. Like, I have pictures in my mind of, you know, Madlib on a, on a, on. on a SP 303 and Doom on an MPC and the same room. Like, I just, they feel like the same person, you know, and there's so many overlaps with them. They're both MC and producer. Obviously, though, the needle is different in, in either case. They both have alter egos.

They just have so much of what it seems to be a shared aesthetic that's just right in line with each other that, to me, it seems like they hung out all the time. Listening to Mad Villainty now, what do you think they brought out of each other? You know, Doom's already made half a dozen more than that. Like, Doom's got such a chaotic catalog already by the time this record comes out. You know, Madlives worked with, you know, loot pack, you know, Quasimodo, yesterday's new quintet. Like, they've got established careers.

What's different about their approaches, both of them, on this project? Like, what did they bring out of each other? Working with Madlib, I would say, because Doom had self-produced Operation Doom's Day, he had worked with, I think, the heat sensors on the Victor Vaughn album. And M. Food came out the same year, but I can't remember which one came out first. But that's another self-released one, except for I think Count Base D. And maybe Madlib has a beat on that, too. So it seems as if Madlib is maybe the best producer that Doom had worked with up until that point,

unless I'm forgetting about somebody. And so it feels like he was positioned uniquely to just focus on the raps in a way where he could get really almost deeper than ever into the MF Doom persona as a recording artist because he don't have to worry about the beats at all. It really feels like the emceeing side of MF Doom

is like fully unleashed on this project. And I wouldn't know what to say about, you know, the other side of that coin except that, it sounds like Madlib at his most adventurous in terms of his digging. And it feels very real time. It feels very like he picked up a record, sampled it through drums on it.

Like everything felt very raw and very fearless in terms of how Madly was constructing in these beats and with no attention paid to where it's come from and whether or not these sounds go together or not in a way where it's not overproduced. It's not overthought. And I'm not sure if that's something that Doom brought out of Madlib or if it was just kind of where he was, but it just seemed like that's where the perfect melding of styles comes in. Is Madville in the best Doom album, the best Doom project? So this is what I'll say to that.

It is widely considered the best one. Yes. And I don't necessarily agree with that. Okay. But I also can't argue with it. So I think it's literally one of those instances where it's widely seen as the best, but it's not really my favorite one. So I don't want to call it the best for me.

Okay. But I see no hill to stand on to say that it's not the best for anybody else. Okay. So that said, what is your favorite? It's really tough. But, I mean, probably the most, the one that I come back to the most is food. It's probably the one that I come back to the most of my own personal enjoyment. Hmm.

The concept there is very solid, right? you know, like I, what is it about, what is it about food? Are you just, just the gourmand in you is attracted to that one? Or what is it about that record? What does gourmand mean? Is that about eating? Is that gourmet? That is about eating, yes.

That's all right. I don't even know if I'm using that word correctly. But let's say I am. Let's assume that I know what I'm talking about as well. Are you a foodie? I do like to assume that you know what you're talking about. That I am, I am not a foodie, so that is not why, unfortunately. Okay.

I prefer Doom best. To me, the essential Doom is Doom rapping over his own beats. To me, those are the pure Doom albums. So Operation Doom's Day, M-Food, born like this, like, that's doom to me. So to me, M-Food is like the pinnacle of him perfectly honing the MF Doom approach to writing and recording and the Doom sound where you could tell he's recording himself. There's no other engineer. They might not even be a studio.

Right, right. And raw beats out of the MPC. Like, to me, M-Food is the peak, the peak Doom Raps, Doom beats on a project. When Doom passed, you wrote this incredibly beautiful tribute to him, a song just called For Doom, you know, that you put out. And on that song, you say, we knew what it was, since. peach fuzz in the eighth grade, you know? So you were on to him from the beginning.

Can you talk a little bit about, you know, KMD, you know, the Mr. Hood album and like just what you thought of him when you first heard him, which was all the way at the beginning? So I knew what it was since peach fuzz in the eighth grade sort of overstates my relationship with early KMD. Because I was literally like, you know, and I even say eighth grade for the rhyme, but I was probably like nine when I first heard Peach Fuzz and to me

it was that was a song that was part of the milieu of watching videos on you know rap city on BT OMTV Raps at the time and it was positioned on the native tongue's side of things where it felt like it went along with that

but I never I didn't hear I didn't hear that KMD album for many years after that so I didn't have that relationship with that material specifically or where where I keyed in on Zev, Love X and Sub Rock, I just thought, oh, Peach Fuzz, that's a cool song. I like it when that one comes on the video show, but I didn't, I didn't have the same relationship to that album as I would other stuff from that era. Okay. So when Operation Doomsday comes out, when he sort of reemerges and reemerges

as MF Doom, do you make the immediate connection? This is the Peach Fuzz guide. Do you come to that record with the entire sort of KMD saga, you know, Black Bastards, you know, sub-rock passing. Like, do you, is it immediately the same guy to you? Or is Operation Doomsday on those early singles, like just the year zero of the Doom persona and you sort of start with a clean slate with this person? Did I know that MF Doom was Zevlov X? Absolutely not. I had zero idea. So the first MF Doom song I heard It had to be 97 was the single version of Dead Bent Which I heard on WHPK radio

I fell asleep taping the rap show Because it was on late at night I woke up the next morning I'm on the train on the way to school Playing my tape of last night And I get to this song It's super And this raw beat comes on

And this dude starts rapping And it was sort of in line with a lot of what was happening in underground hip hop at the time when you think about like, you know, cool Keith is Dr. Octagon and, and some of like the raw, rocket stuff with like Thurston Howell to Third, like that, that sort of of side of things. But there was something that just felt very different about it, too, that I couldn't even put my finger on, but I kept playing that song over and over again. And then a couple of weeks later, almost the exact same thing happened with the single version of greenbacks

where I go to sleep taping the radio show I wake up, I'm playing it on the way to school and I am only one and this Isaac Hayes sample stars and this guy is just like going crazy on it and it sounds so dark and energetic

but it also sounds like it's him and a bunch of other dudes having fun I don't know who any of these people are but like I'm learning from the radio station host the DJs that this is somebody named MF Doom. So then I'm just searching for all the MF Doom that I can find. I end up in either 97 or 98 getting an issue of the magazine ego trip, which is probably, in my opinion, the greatest rap magazine of all time.

And in it, there's an interview with MF Doom. And this is when he's got the old, the old. the old mask they used to cut the side of his mouth up like it was it was yeah it was it was bad time but he had his mask on but he had the big

puffy jacket with the fur around the side of the hood it just was a dope crazy visual and I believe it's from that article that I learned about his history and I learned about him like that this was part of a re-emergence of a person who had been around

before. So, yeah, I learned all of that in real time over, like, 97 and 98, who Doom was, what his story was and was able to start putting things back together from there. And Operation Doom's Day, you know, the Doom character is explicitly a comic book character, right? And this is the late 90s. Like, there are blockbuster comic book movies. But this is before, you know, the MCU, right?

Like comic books are not at the center of culture like they would be just 10, 15 years ago. In terms of his aesthetic, you know, I think a comic books, like sampling Scooby-Doo, like just the cartoons, you know, his association with Cartoon Network later in his career. Like, did his, did he feel like a subcultural product in that era just coming strictly, you know, specifically out of comic books, out of cartoons, that kind of thing, like in the mid to late 90s? And underground rap, it didn't feel that out of this world. It didn't feel that out of left field to have somebody with comic book references. Like, I never really even paid much attention to that. It just always sounded like the same, like, it sounded like the same sort of approach to sampling for aesthetic that, like, Riza would use with the Wu-Tang. It was that sort of seasoning.

And it, you know, I didn't, I never dug too deep. on it because rap, especially underground rap, has sort of always had an obsession with 70s and 80s comics and cartoons. Yes. You listen to a lot of that early Wu-tain. There's a lot of repurposing of cartoon intros, sampling underdog and, you know, repurposing those lyrics into hooks and things.

I think that, you know, there's a part of hip-hop that is about or, I mean, And obviously not for every hip hop artist, but for many hip hop artists that's about like, oh, what did I used to watch on TV growing up? Like, what did I sit in front of the TV and watch in like the late 70s, early 80s? And all of that makes its way back into the work. And to me, Doom was just another extension of that. It all felt very Prince Paul adjacent to me. Sure, of course. You know, like the same sort of sampling for aesthetic as what would happen with Dayline, just a deal.

just a different source. So maybe the biggest differentiator here is the mask itself. And so as a rapper yourself, is there any part of you that wishes that you also wore a 25-pound metal mask everywhere? Like that combination of being instantly recognizable and then completely unrecognizable without it is really interesting to me. Just that dichotomy that he had from the very beginning. Like, what did you make of the mask as a new development in hip hop, maybe? I think 25 pounds is too many pounds, first of all. I agree.

I completely agree. You should do a mask is lighter than that. It seems like it would be very heavy on the neck. So that would be too many pounds. Sure. I, as a person who often finds himself feeling like the most accessible rapper in the universe, right? I feel like there's not a rapper who people can think of who they feel like, feel confident they can reach out to. They can email you anytime, Mike.

Present company included, I suppose. Sorry about that. We're ruining the mystique right here in real time. Don't you worry. No, that's the thing. There is no mystique with me. That's my exact point because I don't have that. Okay.

Okay. All right. So in that sense, I see so much value. and not having a face publicly. Like, that is something I deeply envy is having that bit of separation between who I am as a person and what the musical output is.

And I think there's so many benefits to it. And Doom, I don't think is the... Like, when I think of the faceless person, I actually think a ghost face first, because I remember he was trying to do it. Of course. He was. Early Wu albums, he was trying to not show his face.

There's, there's so, like, Billy, look at Billy Woods. Like, there's, there's so many benefits to it. Not only in the protection of one's own humanity and soul versus what, you know, versus the forces you get exposed to by putting work out there with your face associated with it. I think there's another benefit where you take the person, listen out of it in a way where suddenly, for people, it feels like there could be anybody behind that mask, which leads to this other underlying thought which is it could be everybody behind that mask.

So no matter what you look like, what your rapability is, what you, you know, what you sound like, what you, what you do all day, there's room for you at this table because this table isn't about a specific person. Like it really opens up the appeal, I think, in a way that it's hard to even, it's hard to describe. But I think there's an added benefit of giving people more room to buy into what you're doing

because it is not bound to one person's face. And I guess that leads us to the Doombot aspect of this conversation. Your song about Doom when he passed. with you holding up this photograph, this prized photograph you have of MF Doom, which you realize in real time in this song is not really him. There was an era. Right. There was a time when Doom, you would go to a Doom show and you would realize that it's another guy in the mask impersonating Doom, which is a very funny, abstract idea and not very funny, I imagine, if you're in that crowd having paid money to see your favorite rapper and it's clearly not him.

What do you make of the Doom Bot scheme? So because of who I am in this indie space, I actually know way more about that than I should. Okay. And I can't say everything I know about it, but I can't say this. Okay. I saw Doom three times. I saw Doom one time for real and two times for failure. Wow. That's a tough percentage. That's a 33% actual doom percentage. That's tough.

Because two out of the three were paid for too. So the one time I paid and it wasn't him, I was real mad. Sure. I tell the story on a song that I have with Billy Woods, Mocha only and a Lucid. It's on a Billy Woods and Blackheads first album. I talk. I, I, I, I tell the story. I tell the story of going to the show. This was a New Year's Eve show in L.A. So I'm talking. This is a terrible story. Waiting to bring in the New Year with bars from one of their favorite rappers of all time.

And he came out there. It was it was him with four other people. He never took the mic away from his face once. Like even when there was no music playing between songs, he kept them. mic up to his mouth. Just to be safe. And, right.

And the four dudes are with him overdubbed literally every bar. And it was just the DJ just playing doom songs. Like there was no, no instrumental. It was just playing doom songs. And so we all figured out the jig was up real soon and everybody was real mad. They was real mad.

They spent all that money and waited in line and bought expensive drinks to come be mocked by this. by this false performance. Now, my anger, my frustration at the time was informed by a thought of thinking, oh, this guy who's my favorite rapper thinks it's funny that a bunch of people spent money to see him and he thinks that it's okay because he's a villain

as his persona to say. send these fake people and this is all a thing that he's just going to sit back and count his money and not really care about how his fans feel. Now, what I've learned, and again, I can't say everything I know about this, but I've learned that this was after he had gotten basically deported. Right. Right. So there was a period of time and he had went on a European tour.

and he always knew that if he went on a European tour, there was a chance he was not going to be allowed back in the country because he technically was not born here, even though he grew up here his whole life. So he knew that that was a chance. And he took that chance to do a European tour, and he came back and he wasn't allowed in the country. Now, from that point forward,

there were plenty of shows that were booked already. And to be honest, a few more that were booked knowing that he wasn't going to be able to do it. Sure, sure. But my experience of it retroactively softened once I understood that these were shows that he was not able to do and did not want to cancel because ultimately he was trying to feed his family still. So that part, I do understand. I hated the packaging of it and I hated how he talked about it after the fact because it seemed mad disrespectful. But the more I found out about it, the more I began to understand.

understand. I still don't think it was a great idea, obviously. But I have a different perspective on it now than I did back then. Did that New Year show like end in a riot or a riot adjacent? Not a riot. So, so that show was hosted by some underground LA legends including some Project Bo, people I know Medusa was on the stage. I want to say Micah Nine and some other people War II. And they fed off the crowd's anger and just freestowed the night away. It was incredible. Like, they were able to sort of feel our anger. They were angry too. Like, on behalf of rappers, they were upset that this guy just seemingly came and pulled a heist on everybody like that. Like, they didn't even like being associated with that. So they took it upon themselves to put

on a real hardcore, long-lasting lyrical display. that whole night to sort of overcompensate for the BS that we were all put through. Okay. Well, I'm glad to hear that. I'm relieved. Just a final question. This is sort of related. Like, there's, in the J. Dilla book, Dilla time, there's this incredible story about Dilla's

funeral where M.F. Dume stands up and says that he had a dream, that Dilla came to him in a dream and said that they should do a posthumous collaboration and that Dume should keep most of the royalties. Like, Doom just says this in the middle of, like, a funeral or a wake or something. And I, in addition to being, like, eccentric in a way that we associate with Doom, like, Doom is hustling constantly. Doom is rapping to make money. You look at his catalog, like, every album's on a different label. You know, it's just a struggle to be a working rapper, even for somebody at his level.

And as a working rapper yourself, like, what did Doom teach you about how hard it is to do this? for money. Well, you know, and to be honest, it's harder now to do than it was when he was establishing that pathway. But that is like, I think you keyed in on one of the most important lessons.

I mean, for as much as we talk about the psychological benefit of having these different alter egos and personas and ways to present yourself and how advanced that is for rap to take it that far, there was a legal reason to have an MF Doom, a King Guitara, a Victor Vaughn, mad feeling,

because technically these are all different artists which can go on different labels. So, you know, as was the standard in his era, like, you know, a label would want to sign you to a three, four, five album deal. So this was a way to be able to take those type of deals and still put out work, uh, through. other means. And I think like that's, I mean, honestly, at this point, a lot of that sort of thing has softened, especially in the indie spaces where nobody's trying to lock you up like that. And people aren't really trying to be too restrictive about what you can or can't do. And you want to be respectful of the investment that these labels put into your name and your likeness, considering they are, like, provided they are investing resources into you. But I think everybody's much more realistic now about how hard it is to make a living. And so if you're able to be as productive as an MF Doom was in 2004, so like, I mean, um food, mad villain, and Victor Vaughn all came out in the same year, which meant that, you know, the year previous, he had to be tearing ass making records.

Like, if you can do that. do that, then there's a lot more options. I mean, it's not that it becomes magically easier to make money, but if the main vehicle is to put out work, then you got to work. Right. And his approach sort of taught a lot of us how we can make this work for us. What do you make of his legacy, you know, just a few years on from his death? You know, there's a Madville, there's an AI ad now with like a, I think it's all caps. It's like a loop from a mad villainy song in it. Like, do you, is MF Doom's reputation growing even more, you know, the longer we go on and

there's no one who can replace him? Like, what do you see about how people are hearing him differently, possibly now versus even five years ago? It's interesting. MF Doom is the only rapper that I listen to that. that my son and his friends listen, like the only one. And that includes me. I'm sorry.

That's very funny, but I am sorry. It is, ain't it? But that's the, MF Doom is in a rare air of indie rappers where I just talked to you about me hearing his first, my first. my first experience with his singles in 1997. I don't think that there's another artist I can think of who started their journey in 97, underground, underground rapper, started in 97 that has been able to reach these sort of heights and still be climbing. I think it's completely unprecedented. I think the iconography is a part of that.

I think, you know, that level of symbology, the level of mystique. But it does all come back to the work, though. It all comes back to the work. It all comes back to like an unconventional, truly raw approach to beats and rhymes that other people kind of got close to or hinted at, but he went all the way there. And I think like, you know, for all the talk of KMD, I'm not sure KMD could have did this. KMD was still very much operating within the structures of what was allowed back then. MF Doom didn't care.

MF Doom was sample to Beatles and turn that into the record label. Like, y'all do something about it. You know what I'm saying? Like, no, the things he went through as a person. put him in a situation where it was like all or nothing. Like, so MF Doom was completely uncompromising in his vision of what he felt like a rap song should sound like in a way that I don't think anybody else has ever really approached. Like, there's, you know, I think there's some people who approach that with raps who have approached that with rapes and some people who have approached that with beats. But as a singular entity, I just don't think we've seen it.

Right. Your son will get into you eventually, Mike. No, he used to be into me. Like, he was, you know. Oh, okay. All right. When he was a little kid, it was great. It was so cute when he would listen to me when he was a little kid. Now he rebukes. He rebukes me. Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry to hear it. He'll come back around. It's not right. No, no, I love that he has his own taste. Okay. Yes. Yes. If my, if my, if. If my, if. If my musical self-esteem depended on my son enjoying my music, I'd be in a terrible state, terrible, terrible, terrible state.

You're doing okay. You're managing despite this. Thank you so much, Mike. This is for sure. Thank you. Thanks very much to our guest this week. Open Mike Eagle. Thanks to our producers, Olivia Creary, Justin Sales, and Chris Sutton. Additional production by Kevin Pooler, animations and graphics by Chris Calatin, additional art by Matt James, and special thanks to Cole Kushna. And thanks to you for listening and watching. And now, please, let's all go listen to all caps by Mad Villain. See you next week.