Throughout its history, rap music has been primarily concerned with the art of documenting the world as it is. From the genre’s earliest stirrings in the early 70s to Grandmaster Melle Mel’s detailed social commentary on “The Message” in 1982, hip-hop’s first decade set the tone for rap music moving forward. Since then, the core power of rap music has been its utility as a tool to shed light on the surroundings and lived conditions of the oppressed and most vulnerable. Today, legions of artists continued in this tradition regardless of region or arbitrary industry labels like “conscious”, “gangsta”, “underground” or “mainstream”. While there is much that MF DOOM’s extensive catalog can say about the world around us, what separates DOOM from many of his artistic peers, antecedents, and descendants is the fact that while most rappers tell us about the world as it is, DOOM’s work occupies a world of his own creation.
In 2004, MF DOOM released MM..FOOD, a magnum opus that ushered us into a bizarre world of decadence. With its overarching set of food-related metaphors, MM..FOOD finds DOOM painting a bitterly comedic portrait of a life tainted by vice, sex, violence, and jealousy. It’s a brilliant and novel device that gives DOOM plenty of room to explore the album’s themes.
In sharp contrast to the dark timbre of the lyrics, MM..FOOD’s music and sample choices are built around a bright and colorful sonic palette. MM..FOOD opens with a bit of sampled dialogue that hints at DOOM’s use of food as the album’s core metaphor. The brief snippet finds the three young graffiti artists planning to make a quick food run before the main beat for “Beef Rapp” drops. DOOM takes center stage from here, building up a multi-pronged metaphor about beef. The early 2000s were marked by highly publicized rap beefs like Nas vs. Jay-Z, 50 Cent vs. Ja Rule, and the Lox/Jadakiss vs. State Property/Beanie Sigel. In a playful yet cautionary tone, DOOM characterizes rap beef as an unhealthy agent in hip-hop’s cultural bloodstream. Just as the overconsumption of red meat can lead to heart disease, with its real-life violent undertones, rap beef can threaten the health and well-being of artists and the culture at large.
With songs like the breezy, beat-box-laced “Hoe Cakes,” “Potholderz” (feat. Count Bass D), and the loopy, Madlib-produced “One Beer,” MM..FOOD is as much of a feast of aural delights as it is a serious piece of literary art. “Deep Fried Frenz” finds DOOM revealing some paranoid, anti-social shades of his character as he waxes poetic about the darker side of friendship. With some of the best writing of his career, “Deep Fried Frenz” reveals DOOM’s perspective as a humorous cynic as he laments the fake friends he writes off coldly claiming that they “wouldn’t have even made a worthy enemy.”
20 years after its release, it’s easy to see that MM..FOOD has become iconic in its own right. Much like DOOM himself, this album has taken its rightful place in the pantheon of beloved hip-hop staples. From the influence that the album’s rough and loose production style has had on contemporary boom-bap and “lo-fi” to how his artistry and pen have opened up bold new creative possibilities for MCs, DOOM’s work continues to shape our music today. For artists and appreciators alike, the examples that can be drawn from DOOM and this masterful album are numerous. At its heart, MM..FOOD shows us that imagination is not just an instrument for us to catalog the world in which we were given. DOOM left us with an example of how art can point the way toward what is possible.
One of Hip-Hop’s most beloved anti-heroes, the ever-inventive MF DOOM (often referred to as simply DOOM) has received widespread praise for his sharp, candid rhymes, as well as his choppy, sample-heavy production style. Initially known as Zev Love X, a member of the short-lived but influential Golden Era rap group K.M.D, the MC/producer born Daniel Dumile re-emerged at the end of the ’90s with a persona inspired by the Marvel Comics super villain Dr. Doom. He reinforced his enigmatic presence by donning an elaborate metal mask during all of his public appearances and creating numerous alter egos for specific projects and collaborations. MF DOOM’s music has been described as, “the fine line between insanity and genius”. Unconventional, abstract, unorthodox; these words merely scrape the surface of defining his approach musically, conceptually, even rhythmically.
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