Dissect - S12E1 - MF DOOM: A Hero in a Villain's Mask

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Season 12 of Dissect celebrates the life and legacy of MF DOOM through a line by line, beat by beat analysis of his art. Most of the season will be spent dissecting DOOM and Madlib’s classic album Madvillainy, but we’ll also be covering his debut Operation Doomsday, MM..FOOD, and Born Like This.  On today’s episode, we explore the legend of DOOM’s origin story, including Daniel Dumile’s childhood in New York, the rise and tragic fall of his rap group KMD, and his reemergence as MF DOOM in the late 90s. Host, Writer, EP: Cole Cuchna Writer/Researcher: Camden Ostrander Original Score/Audio: Kevin Pooler Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Music: Birocratic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The year is 1998 and were inside the rustic brick walls of the New Yorkan Poets Cafe in the lower east side of Manhattan. Like most nights here, the place is packed. The man stepping onto the cafe's modest stage to perform next is wearing a loose white tank top, a red fillies hat, and panty hose stretched over his face. No one in the crowd knows it yet, but they're about to witness hip-hop history. Throughout the 90s, historic nights were not uncommon at the New Yorkerican. The humble brick-walled cafe was one of the most important creative hubs in the world, a multicultural sandbox for aspiring and renowned poets, playwrights and musicians to showcase their work at the nightly open mics. By the mid to late 90s, when rap turned increasingly commercial,

the New Yorkerican became the epicenter for the East Coast blossoming underground hip-hop scene. On any given night, you might catch most deaf or Talib Kuali debuting a new verse, see an impromptu performance by Black Thought, Common, and Questlove, or witness a hungry pre-fame Eminem backed only by a cassette tape. For emcees that prided themselves on the art of lyricism, performing at the New Yorkan had become a rite of passage. Such are the circumstances tonight for the man now holding the mic with pantyhose over his face. His government name is Daniel Dumillet.

But tonight he's performing for the first time under his new alias. An alter ego in the hip-hop world would soon know as rap's mass supervillain, One of the most fascinating, mysterious, influential emcees of a generation, M.F. Doom. If we were anywhere else in the world, MF Doom would be a completely new name to most in the crowd. At the time, Doom just had two singles out on a small but influential indie label. But the kind of folks that filled the New Yorkan weren't your typical crowd. This was a tight-knit community of hip-hop heads that took pride in being early on the scene's newest voices. They already knew Doom singles.

According to DJ Nasty Buzz, who organized the show that night, the place was frenetic when Doom took the stage. Quote, 90% of the crowd already knew every word to every song he did. It was fucking magical. If performing at the New Orrican was a ride of passage, then M.F. Doom had been knighted. Or at least that's how it's remembered today. The legend of that night is one of many. in the lore of Daniel Dumalay's transformation into the ignigmatic, metal-faced villain with ambitions to destroy the rap world with his lyrical superpowers.

In the two decades that followed, from his genesis in the late 90s to his untimely death in 2020, M.F Doom authored a beautifully bizarre body of work, an expansive, multi-character musical universe that includes six solo albums, seven collaborative albums, and a labyrinth of EPs, compilations, instrumentals, and singles. Doom's first offering, 1999's operational Operation Doomsday was an instant cult classic that introduced his new comic-inspired character and established Doom's surreal, free-associative rhymes recited over raw, self-produced beat. Hey, yo, y'all, y'all, y'all, y'all can't stand right here. In his right hand was your man's worst nightmare.

I used to cop a lot, but another cop, no drop. Old Mike's like, pointing tails tight and bob a lot. By candlelight, man, I write these rhymes till I'm burnt out. Motions from experience, shit that I learned about. Topics and views generally concerned about. After continuing to build out Doom's musical universe with projects from his other characters King Guitara and Victor Bond, the next solo release under the MF Doom moniker was 2004's M. Food, an idiosyncratic concept album in which all 15 tracks are about, well, food. It's an absurd recipe that only Doom could somehow cook to perfection.

Beef rap could need to getting teeth capped or even a reef from all dudes or some beef crap. There's only one bill left. However, screaming all in our ears like we're deaf. You hear it in his sleep sometimes, flare it in your jeep so your peoples can scare it them rhymes. Real rhymes, not your everyday hologram. However, the undisputed crown jewel of M.F Doom's wonderfully weird discography came just months before food.

Conceived in a literal bomb shelter in the secluded hills of Los Angeles, Doom joined forces with the equally elusive, sampling savant Madlib to create not just the pinnacle of Doom's own catalog, but arguably the crowning achievement of independent hip hop as a whole 2004's Mad Billing. M.F Doom by dissecting some of the supervillains' most beloved works. Today's introductory episode will cover Daniel Dumalay's origin story and the tragic circumstances that birthed his masked alter ego. We'll then spend an episode on Doom's debut Operation

Doomsday before dedicating the majority of the season to a line-by-beat analysis of mad villainy. Finally, we'll finish the series by dissecting a handful of Doom's most revered tracks from M-Food. Through this extensive study, we'll discover why MF Doom is widely praised as one of the most gifted, anomalous emcees to ever touch a mic. Why a sweeping range of contemporary artists, from Tyler the Creator to Tom York to the weekend, all celebrate Doom as an indispensable influence. Why, some 25 years later, that same emphatic adoration and excitement for Doom heard in the New York Rican that night still resounds as loud as ever. And so, with that, and without further ado, let's dissect.

When Mad Villanee's curls, M.F. Doom rapped, his life is like a folklore legend. As he often did, Doom's referring to himself in third person, describing the intentional mystique constructed around the character he created, the separation between the man and the man who wears the mask. Thus, as we begin to walk back the path of Daniel Dumalay's life, it's important to note that we don't know everything, nor should we. Doom's villainy often operated in the shadows, and much of the unknown serves his work better than any factual knowledge ever could. But here's some things we do know. Daniel Dumalay was born on July 13, 1971.

The eldest of five children, Daniel grew up in the New York City area, frequently moving around the city while attending elementary school in Manhattan. His lifelong fascination with language emerged at an early age, as he told a New Yorker, quote, "'Ever since third grade, I had a notebook and was putting together words just for fun. I like different etymologies, different slang that came out of different areas, different languages, different dialects, unquote. By 1983, Daniel and his family had settled in Long Island, New York, home to pioneering rap groups like Public Enemy, De La Sol, EPMD, and leaders on the new school. Daniel became enamored with hip-hop, but had to listen to it in secret when his mom was away at work.

Growing up in the proximity to the birth and rapid growth of hip-hop, Daniel and his young brother Dingalizway bonded over their love at this blossoming culture. The two were incredibly close, with Doom later recalling that, quote, it always seemed like me and him was twins, or it might have even seemed that he was older, like his spirit was older, unquote. The Dumalay brothers first became a part of a Long Island neighborhood crew at the Get Yours Posse. By 1988, while in high school, they had formed a group of their own dubbed KMD. Initially a graffiti crew, Daniel took on the alias Zev Love X. His brother went by DJ Subrock and their friend Alonzo Hodge assumed the name Onyx the Birthstone Kid. Introduce yourself. Zub Love X from the cause. MC On the Birthstone Kid.

MC Select the Subrock. All right. Now, what does KMD stand for? Cause in much damage. And I say caused and much damage. I mean a positive cause in a much damage society. Now how did you guys get together? Well, me and my brother here, Subrock. We used to be down back in the days because, you know, my brothers. Yeah, we used to listen a lot of radio and stuff, different hip-hop shows, you know, through that, right? We got to hip-hop and rhyming and stuff. The name KMD and the meaning behind it is an early example of Daniel's lifelong love of wordplay. Quote, with KMD, those three letters just sound great, the way they ring together in that order.

When we first figured out the name, that's all we wanted. Then we built it from there. It was really more of a graffiti crew at first. It just looks ill when you write it. At first it stood for cause and much damage. Then it was more like cause and a much damaged society, like a positive cause. We used the letters to make sense of what we were trying to do musically at any given time, unquote.

Daniel's alias Zev Love X was also created with intention, a concoction of words and letters born from semantic experimentation. Quote, I started with X and I also liked Z and V. Then I added love in the middle. It was always about the illest combination of letters. and not many people used Z or V in graffiti back then. X always posed a question. In algebra, it was a mystery.

Zev Love X also spelled out X evolves backwards, unquote. Between KMD and his own moniker, we can see from the start that Daniel was very much interested in exploring the multidimensional possibilities of words and letters, symbols to be imbued with personal meaning, public messaging, and even education. Doom told Spin Magazine, quote, My mother raised us Islam, and then my father, being a teacher, always taught us about our people, about Marcus Garvey and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

But when I started junior high school, I realized motherfuckers didn't know about these people. So I was like, let's spread the word. We were straight up teachers. Next up, Don, a special appearance by KMD's Self Love X. In 1989, before KMD released to work, one's clock, In 1989, before KMD released any music of their own, Daniel, aka Zevlove X, landed a feature on a song called The Gas Face by 3rd Bass, a New York City hip-hop group signed a Def Jam Records. The Gas Face became a hit, reaching number five on the U.S. rap charts and eventually achieving gold status. The boys even got to perform it live on the Arsenio Hall Show.

Along with becoming a classic song from hip-hop's Golden Era, the gas face also holds the honor of being Daniel Dumalay or Zevlove X's first appearance on a record. It would prove to be a life-altering feature, as it caught the attention of A&R Dante Ross at Elektra Records, which at the time touted a roster that included Brand Nubian, Grand Puba, Dell the Funky Homosapian, Pete Rock, and C.L. Smooth, and leaders of the new school. Dante signed KMD to Elektra in 1990,

when Zev and Subrock were just 18 and 16 years old, The boys immediately went to work on their debut album. Zeb and Sub would make beats at home during the day and record in a studio at night. Here's Dante Ross talking to Open Mic Eagle about the brother's unique creative process. So Doom would start a lot of the beats. But he's not very patient. So if you hear even his later stuff, it all feels a little unfinished. And the person who kind of was the finisher was Sub.

Sub was more technically adept. And they worked in tandem, but Sub Rock was more the pre-enched. producer, which people don't really know. Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived in a deep dark jungles of Africa. His name was Little Sambo. Uh-oh, Zio's exercise in his right to be hostile. They're always trying to say that cool as me. I don't understand, man.

I don't understand. I don't know. My temper, tempers up to like tenor. Switch up his thoughts that I... In May of 1991, KMD released their debut album, Mr. Hood. The album's title is the name of the Project Central Carrier. which the brothers created by cutting up audio from a Spanish language instructional vinyl. My name is Jose Gonzalez.

I'm my name is Mr. Hood. What is your name? Yeah, I'm something of X. It's a KMD. I am pleased to meet you. Oh yeah, likewise, how you doing anything? It was uncanny how they had all of the records working with each other. And they literally had it all mapped out before they did it.

Really? Like there wasn't a lot of them. lot of second-guessing. And Doom went through a lot of my records, and he knew what records of mine he was going to use when and where. It was wild. In conversation with Jeff Mao at the Red Bull Music Academy, Doom explained the intention behind Mr. Hood's central concept and character. But based around his character, he's like a stiff, like he sounds like real like a corny old dude, but he's like a real, real thug, like Hood, hood dude. The whole record was based around us kind of schooling him, bringing him into the crew kind of thing. And by the end of the record, you know, we get him down, he kind of, he gets it through his skull.

He starts being more, you know, like aware of what's going on, more conscious towards the end of the record. Mr. Hood is the first iteration of the kind of conceptual work that would come to define Doom's entire career, building worlds and developing characters through sonic collages composed of samples, skits, beats, and songs. The album also showcased Zev's lyrical gifts, as he seamlessly, weaved his wit and playfulness with politically potent critiques of inequality in American society. The original man is the black man. Truth. I'm presented to the youth is more than enough proof.

But when one mixes truth with a goof, caused this contradiction and confusion, so I raised the root. Tongue to tooth. Following the release of Mr. Hood in 91, KMD supported the record by touring with larger acts like Queen Latifah, Digital Underground, Big Daddy Kane, and Third Bass. Doom would later call this time his favorite experience in hip-hop, with the young brothers now ages 20 and 18, having a coming-of-age type experience being exposed to all they came with life on tour. Their manager and third base member Pete Nice would later reflect, quote,

KMD came in as basically like this innocent group of devout Muslim artists who were very young. Then they got a little older, started to get their own identities. Then next thing you know, they're drinking 40s and popping acid all over the place. I had Sub Rock come into my office several times with a machete in his coat, and I'd be like, you gotta calm down, man, unquote. Dante Ross would also note that, quote, there was an immense change with the guys in between records, both as people and as artists. They were hanging out in the city a lot, and they were experimenting with a lot of mind-altering

drugs, like a lot of them. Even so, I still felt good about what might become of the Mr. Hood record, unquote. While on tour, KMD was also working on their sophomore album, Black Bastards, It was during this time that Onyx left the group, the reasons for which aren't entirely clear. Nonetheless, Zevlov and Subrock carried on with great passion and focus, creating through a time of rapid growth and change. Doom would later reflect on this period, telling the wire quote, That's when we were growing up.

During the album, I had my first son and my brother had his daughter. Early manhood memories. The game was changing too. Gangster rap took over the shit. Then, just being at that age, a lot of stuff happens too, especially living in America, being brown people or whatever you want to call it. That age is a very pivotal time. That's when you get hit with a lot of traps.

There's a lot of growing up you do, I think I was 18, 19 when I did the first record. So that's an age where, you know, it's real formative years where you're going into manhood and whatnot. And it's like, you know, there's a lot of things about society in general that you find out. The next record, maybe two or three years after that, a lot of the awareness that came out of being in the business, went into that record. I think that's where you get a lot of the, you know, the little edge on it. It's like a talk shitty kind of record, kind of like, yeah, well, whatever.

Like, to the industry kind of like, like, a little bit like, yeah, well, fuck y'all, we're still going to do all the thing. By spring of 1993, Black Bastards was nearly done. According to Daniel, just a few songs needed some finishing touches. However, before the brothers can completely finalize the album, tragedy suddenly struck. Late at night on April 23, 1993, Subrock was hit by a car while walking across a Long Island expressway.

He would later die in the hospital from his injuries. He was just 19 years old. Subrock's sudden death left Daniel devastated. Sub was his brother and creative partner, family and best friend. At his funeral, Daniel placed a boom box next to Subrock's casket and played Black Basterts for those in attendance. Fittingly, the album ends with a final sign-off from Subrock himself. After Subrock's passing, Daniel increasingly turned to substances for

relief. In a rare interview with 4080 magazine, less than a year after subs death, he told Elliot Wilson that, quote, The way shit is now, I rarely get a chance to feel good. I get high to keep my mind off the everyday bullshit. He would also tell the source during this time that, quote, I feel like a fucking piece of bullshit. Despite his pain, Daniel was determined to release black bastards to the world in honor of his late brother. By the end of 93, he'd completed the remaining work on the album himself. This included hand-drawing the cover art, which depicts the racist caricature Sambo being hung by a noose. Originally a pro-slavery propaganda image, the Sambo character portrayed black men as simple-minded, docile servants who are happy to obey their masters.

Since Mr. Hood, KMD's logo was Sambo with a slash across his face, an image meant to symbolize a rejection of stereotypes. The Black Bastards cover was a continuation of this theme. We took it a step further with the Black Baster cover. Now we got this character on a hangman's loose. So we hang the character, which represents the same thing. It's the ending or the deading of that stereotype. You know what I mean? At the same time, it's represents like the hangman game,

like where letters are missing out of the... So it's like a puzzle. You know what I mean? So the whole record is like a puzzle, but at the same time, still with the message of no more stereotypes, you know what I'm saying? By early 1994, Black Bastards was mixed and mastered, and by spring, Electra had released its first single. What a nitty y'all. Yo, a niggie know the game.

What a niggie name Black. X like the Flick Slip. What a niggins C.M. Crew. What a niggie duke. Black Bastards was given a release date of May 3, 1994. Advanced copies were sent to the press. Pre-release interviews with Zevlov were conducted.

A music video was filmed. Everything seemed to be going as planned. But then, just weeks before the album's schedule release date, Daniel was unexpectedly summoned to the Elektra offices. Quote, We were at a session. We got a call from Elektra. They wanted to see us there at the office the next day for a meeting. I didn't really think much about it, honestly. We got there and they had the cover artwork on the table. There were a couple people in the room, including one old dude I'd never seen before. He was speaking on behalf of Elektra. It seemed like they had everything planned out already, like they knew how everything was going to end. before we said anything, and they said they weren't going to put out the album. They didn't even

want us to change the cover. I guess what we were doing was going to make waves and places where they had financial interests, unquote. It turns out that a prominent journalist at Billboard, Terry Rossi, saw the album cover in advance and misinterpreted it as racist rather than anti-racist. Without hearing the record or speaking to Daniel about his art, she published a piece scolding the executives at Warner Brothers, the major label that owned Elektra. At the time in the early 90s, rap music censorship was a hot topic, and Warner specifically was still in damage control after a highly publicized controversy over Ice T's song Cop Killer, which was released on their label. Looking to avoid any further backlash, Electra chose to wash their hands of not only Black

Bastards, but KMD altogether. It was an ironic twist of fate, given that Black Bastards was a deliberately bold title meant to quote, make a mockery of this bullshit system of censorship. Here's Dante Ross again, recounting the aftermath of Warner's decision. to drop KMD from the label. And the day we showed up for the meeting, he told Doom, he was like, I'm going to give you back your masters, I'm going to write you a check for X amount of money, and I'm going to let you go.

And Doom really seemed unfazed by it. In one of my office, I had a case of wine, and he popped open a bottle, me and I drank two bottles of wine. And he said to me, I should get dropped more often every day. He said, I'm going to get $25,000 on my record back. And we walked downstairs out of the building drunk, and that was it. And it was a decision.

It was a decision that I've always thought was absolute crock of shit. That it was total bullshit. They weren't allowed to defend their rhetoric, their point of view, and I believe in dialogue. And there was no dialogue in this case. And the kid got thrown to the wolves. Owning the Masters to Black Bastards meant that Dano could shop the album to other labels. But as he would later recount, quote,

it was a dead album. Everybody was scared of it. Everybody shot it down. Believe me, I would have wanted something to do with the business if the business wanted to do anything with me back then. It just seemed that all of a sudden people didn't want to fuck with me anymore, unquote. Within the span of a year and less than five years after his pivotal gas face feature, Daniel Dumalay was dealt a triple blow of life-altering adversity.

His brother and creative partner was dead. His label abandoned him, and he was deemed a pariah by the music industry. Wandering the wasteland of loss, scorned by dastardly corporate cowards, Our hero Daniel Dumalay would disappear into the shadows, into the layer of his mind, marking the end of Zevlov X and the beginning of the folklore legend of M.F. Doom. That's right after the break. If M.F. Doom had his way, the period between Zevlov's disappearance in 1994 and the emergence of Doom in 97 would remain shrouded in mystery and rumor.

Thus because the folklore version of this period mirrors your typical comic book origin story, where a powerless, down-and-out man betrayed by society, transforms themselves, into a villain and re-emerges to seek his revenge. But we do know some things about Daniel's three-year absence from the public eye. For a time, he became a drifter, telling Hawashu for the wire, quote, I was damn near homeless, walking the streets of Manhattan, sleeping on benches and shit. It was a really, really dark time. At some point, Daniel began dividing his time between raising his son in Georgia and throwing himself back into music in New York. Here, he'd often stay with fellow rapper Curious, who witnessed Daniel's musical evolution during this difficult time.

You could see it. It was heavy on him. He's very introverted, and so we'd still be drinking off 40s and tripping, and he's making music and still working, but it was definitely a dark period. You could definitely tell he was going through it, man, but he didn't fold his music and everything. His artistry just got stronger, like he took it and put it on his back, and shit was hard and dark, but that's where a lot of his progressive to the next stage was coming from. He basically took the, you know, how they say the lemons and was making lemonade, man. Daniel himself would later remark that even during this dark period, it was always his intention to continue making music his career.

Yeah, I guess, you know, I mean, it wasn't like a constant depression, but I mean, like, I'm just a depressed motherfucker. I get depressed every day, you know what I'm saying? One time or not, or another in the day, maybe it's just my genetics or whatever. but I look at it like it's an obstacle that helps me climb up. I attribute to science. Like, you know, you got a laboratory experiment going on and you might not get the desired result the first few times,

but at least you can mark those off and say if it's not this, this, this, this, and it must be this. You know what I mean? So, yeah, it kind of helped out with the whole reemergence, but that was going to happen anyway. You know, I just don't give up. In the years that Daniel was plotting his comeback, a lot had changed in the world of hip-hop. On one hand, rap had become increasingly commercial, both in sound and sales.

By the late 90s, hip-hop was the top-selling genre in the country, thanks in large part to crossover hits from the likes of P. Diddy and his label Bad Boy Records. Meanwhile, underground hip-hop, led by artists like Most Deaf, Talib Kuali, and Company Flow, looked to preserve the musical and lyrical integrity of the genre, with independent record labels like Rockus, Stonesthrow, and Fondola, playing a critical role in breaking and distributing underground artists. Fondolum Records in particular would become pivotal in Daniel's public return to rap. The label was owned by Robert Bobito Garcia, one half of Stretch and Bobito, an extremely influential underground radio show that helped launch the careers

of Nause, Eminem, JZ, Biggie, and others. After being introduced in Bobito through their mutual connection curious, Daniel was invited to freestyle on this historic show in April of 1997, marking his first public appearance in three years. However, there was no. No mention of KMD or Zevlov X during the broadcast. He was now referred to only as MF Doom. Oh yeah, true, too. I like to big up to all the monster Island Massive. And beware before I triple dare you like the last kid.

He asked me what we don't got to Duke I, son. For one flow that's elementary, my dear Wats, son. Secondly, MF Doom would freestyle over a total of four beats during his segment, where he'd make a number of references to his new alias. When num gums, y'amas, y'all late toast. Back to you, MF Doom, you late show, ho. Who? As to the U to the B E aura.

Who chronicle these times in a 3D horror? MF Doom. MF, man flows, metal fingers, metal facing. Be on the lookout for the MF Doom release on Fondulam recordings. Du out in End of May. As we just heard, the End of Doom's freestyle was punctuated by an announcement of his debut release on Bobito's Fondulum Records, a self-produced three-track 12-inch released in May of 19. 97.

M.F. M.F. Doom wasted no time building his mythos on wax. The first thing listeners would hear when dropping the needle on this new artist's debut single was a theatrical exclamation, he's super, as in super villain, followed by Doom formally introducing himself to the world. Doom proclaims it's the Doom, super metal finger villain. As his first official words uttered on record, we can see the forethought Daniel put into this character, with both the music and the words building Doom's world from the very start.

Notably, like his stretch and Bobito appearance, Doom makes no overt mention of KMD or Zevlove X on the deadbent 12 inch. For all intents and purposes, MF Doom was a brand new artist, and for Daniel, it was a creative, blank slate, a chance to be reborn. And really, I just continued on with the ideas I had in my head, and I developed the Doom character and developed the songs and more of the concept around the character. I came with a different lyrical style, a different... I try to really make it distinctly different from the Zevl of X character,

like how you would have the characters in the book like, you know, that different, you know. Like KM.D. and Zevlov X, the name M.F. Doom contains a multitude of meanings. Doom was a nickname his mother gave him a child, a play on their last name, Dumalay. Thus, when it came time to formally construct a character around this name, Daniel would find a natural kinship with the Marvel comic book Supervillain Dr. Doom, who we'll talk more about in our next episode. The MF and MF Doom can be traced back to Doom's friend and frequent collaborator MF Grimm, who's used the tag since the late 80s. For Doom, MF evolved to mean different things. If he was producing, MF stood for metal fingers,

a nod to both his fingers working the MPC and the protective metal gloves don by the villain. If he was rapping, it was metal face, a reference to the metal mask the the MC eventually wore. On other occasions, it was simply motherfucking, mad flows, money folder, or any number of creative combinations he might think of. And with his new alias, came a new sound. As we heard in the interview clip, Daniel consciously deviated from the cadence and delivery style of Zevlov X in order to give Doom a distinct vocal identity, where Zevlov is energetic, higher pitched, and bounces on the beat. Doom is laxed, Lurred and Baritone, moving on and off the beat at his leisure. We can actually get a good sense of

this vocal transformation by listening to two different versions of Gastrals. The song was the second track on Doom's debut with Fondolum, but he actually recorded a demo of the song back in 94, while still Zeblove X. Here's that early version. Now let's compare this with the 97 Doom version of Gastralls, noticing the distinct change in vocal tone and flow. We can hear a similar contrast when Compaired two different versions of Doom's Deadbent verse, which he first recorded as a feature for an unreleased remix of the song Feel It by Diamond D. I hold the mic like niggas hold it girl type, but I ain't after her, probably your

accurate girl white. And now the same verse on Deadbent. In Deadbent's opening couplet, the first official rhyme from the mouth of MF. Doom, we already find Doom's trademark multisyllabic rhyme schemes, witty analogies, and atypical phrasings. He raps, I hold the mic like N-words holder girls tight, but I ain't after her, probably your Accura, Pearl White. Along with the two-syllable N- rhyme of Girls Tight and Pearl White, each line in the couplet also

contains an internal rhyme. and tight in the first and the three-syllable after her and Accura in the second. Together, the couplet conveys the kind of fear Doom inspires whenever he begins rhyming, with guys clutching their girls like pearls to protect them from the villain. While the dead-bent 12-inch displays so much of what would eventually define MF Doom, it'd be another two years before Doom's debut full-length LP would be released, when the character was fully presented to the world. During this interim, Doom released two more singles with Fondolum and also made that debut live appearance at the New York while wearing panty hose over his face.

Obscuring his face at his first ever live performance is evidence that anonymity was a foundational feature of Doom's character from the start. For Daniel, it was a deliberate rejection of the increasingly commercialization of rap at the time, an attempt to redirect the audience's focus on the music, on the art. It's a time in hip-hop where things from my point of view started going more to what things look like, opposed to what things look like. opposed to what things sound like. You know what I mean? Before, you know, you really was going off the sound of the record, straight skills.

See, once it started getting more publicized and, you know, it started being hip-hop, started being more of a money-making thing, then you get these corporate ideas where you want to put what it looks like to sell what it sounds like, but we're dealing with music. So what I did was I said, all right,

look, I'm gonna come with the angle of, it don't matter what I look like, you know, it don't matter what the art artists look like, it's more with the artists sound like. Doom's anonymity would eventually evolve from stockings, bandanas, and ace bandages into a more formalized, face-concealing comic book-style mask. Here's graffiti artist Keio recounting his role in its construction, from cheap spray-painted plastic mask to the iconic custom-made metal mask we know today.

For his first shows, we went out and got, you know, the cheap Halloween masks you wore when you were a kid with the rubber band around the back? That was, um, Darth Maul. It was red and black. I spray painted it silver, aluminum, rustolium, and he rocks that in the first video he's got that. But then what we did was we went out and found the whole helmet from the movie Gladiator. So I took just the faceplate off,

and I took it to my boy who does sculpture in metal. We shaped it a little. And then I took the webbing from the yellow construction worker helmets, and I fastened the face plate so that he could wear it and it would actually swivel up. What made me think about the mask? See, you know what it is?

As the character evolved and I started doing more live shows, you know, the fan base started to expand and more people were getting it. I said, okay, let me put a more visual accompaniment to it so when we do live shows, they can really get, you know, they can get it, you know what I'm saying?

And it's like a little bit of theater in it, you know, since it's a stage there, you might as well utilize the stage to come across, you know, in a theatrical way as well as lyrical, you know what I mean? So it's really just taken from theater and just making the presentation a theatrical one and expressing that character. This kind of thoughtful character development and world building was present in Daniel's work since KMD's Mr. Hood. only now he was taking it further, incorporating a level of performance art anytime he donned a mask. Of course, there's irony in the fact that a mask intended to de-emphasize visual image would eventually become one of the more iconic visual images in hip-hop history. It seems Doom himself understood this better than anyone, telling the New Yorker, quote, A visual always brings a first impression.

But if there's going to be a first impression, I might as well use it to control this story. So why not do something like throw a mask on, unquote? Indeed, more than a name or a sound, the mask became an immediate, efficient way to convey the fact that MF Doom is a character. It is a physical barrier placed between the author and the audience, forcing us to first confront the mask before reaching the man behind it. That separation was critical to the kind of artistic freedom Daniel saw at this stage of his career. Quote, the Doom thing is to be able to come at things with a different point of view. I thought the mask would be an easy way for people to see and differentiate between characters, sort of like when an actor gains weight for a role.

You have writers that write about crazy characters, but that doesn't mean the writer himself is crazy. It's important to remember that I'm not Doom. I just write as this evil supervillain rapper named Doom. He's a typical villain that you have in any story where a lot of people misunderstand him. But he's always looked at as the bad guy, but he really got a heart of gold.

You know what I'm saying? He's for the children. And it's like a Robin Hood kind of character. Love by the people, but then the powers. that B may not really get along with how he get down, you know what I'm saying? For Daniel, there's also a racial component in Doom's persona. We're calling the same kind of thematic undertones as KMD Sambo character. He told the Wire, quote,

From the point of view of America, we're the villains, but I'm the super villain. Out here it's been so desensitized. I had to figure out a way to get the point across and still make it interesting, or make it seem like a race thing. The way comics are written shows you the duality of things, how the bad guy ain't really a bad guy if you look at it from his perspective. Doom is about bringing people together.

I like to show different perspectives. Put yourself in this guy's shoes for a second and this guy ain't so different from you. The character Doom is a brown person, but he could be anybody, any race. It could be you. Villain represents anybody. Anybody in head could wear the mask

and be a villain. Male, female, any race, so-called race, you know what? It's about what you're coming from from your heart. You know what's the message? What you got to say? Understanding that Daniel saw Doom as a universal character ultimately meant to inspire empathy and connection,

we ought to observe the potent symbolism of the chrome metal mask being reflective. Literally and figuratively, the mask is a mirror that shows us back to ourselves in the face of the artist, much like how villains reveal problems in society or how our own frustrations with others often unclogue our own insecurities.

Thus, as we prepare to embark on our dissection of the music of M.F. Doom, we do so with no intention of trying to take Daniel's mask off. Rather, we're trying to look into the mask and see our own reflection. My servants began to forge what was to become the most dreaded costume on the face of the earth. With the mask. While Daniel doled out pieces of his new character with the Fondulam singles, it wasn't until 1999 that MF Doom's sound, story, and aesthetic would truly coalesce into the first fully realized presentation of one of the most influential, charismatic icons in hip-hop history.

It was then on October 19th, the month of the mask, that MF Doom finally unleashed on the world his diabolical scheme to destroy rap. Of course, this is MF Doom's debut LP. Of course, this is MF Doom's debut LP. Operation Doomsday, an album that represents the culmination of Daniel Dumalay's five years of plotting in the shadows, an album that will unpack next time on Dysect. Today's episode of Dysect was written by Camden Ostrander and me, Kolkushna. If you enjoyed the episode, please tell a friend about the new season, leave a review wherever you're listening, or share on social media tagging at Dysect podcast. All of this really goes a long way in the sustainability of the show.

Audio editing at original score by Kevin Pooler. Additional production is by Justin Sales. Theme music by bureaucratic. All right. Thanks, everyone. Talk to you next week.