Author Topic: RIP MF DOOM  (Read 1089 times)

Sccit

RIP MF DOOM
« on: December 31, 2020, 01:45:39 PM »

Invincible

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #1 on: December 31, 2020, 03:37:02 PM »
Not heard much of his music but this is shocking. R.I.P.

doggfather

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2020, 10:47:22 PM »
Rip
https://twitter.com/dggfthr

HELP

I'm an ol' school collecta from the 90's SO F.CK DIGITAL, RELEASE A CD!

RIP GANXSTA RIDD
RIP GODFATHER
RIP MONSTA O
RIP NATE DOGG
RIP BAD AZZ
 

romson19

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2021, 01:56:43 AM »
He died two months ago and no one even knew it? Wtf

RiP Doom
RIP Nate Dogg
RIP Nipsey Hussle
RIP Bad Azz
 

dnjp4life

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2021, 03:45:12 AM »
Just woke up to find out one of my favourite rappers has died, devastating.  His was the last music I was listening to just yesterday evening as the year came to and end.  What a horrible start to the new year.

I got put onto DOOM's music when I was travelling in 2011, and when I was listening to Madvillainy I couldn't take it at first, just found it too weird and unconventional compared to the rap that I'd heard up to that point, but it soon sunk in and hit me like a ton of bricks.  From then on I had to hear pretty much everything he had ever done, and just looking at my collection this morning I counted about 15 or so of his albums and side projects. 

Especially this last half year I started listening to him heavily again, and found some really good fan-made mixes on YouTube, along with the Cookin Soul x DOOM Christmas tape which I discovered and listened to obsessively this past Christmas.

Rest in Peace MF DOOM/Metal Fingers/Zev Love X/King Geedorah/Viktor Vaughn, one of the best and most unique rappers there ever was.
 

Sccit

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #5 on: January 01, 2021, 07:49:53 AM »
He died two months ago and no one even knew it? Wtf

RiP Doom


his son died in 2017 as well


k1000

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #6 on: January 01, 2021, 11:53:50 AM »
He died two months ago and no one even knew it? Wtf

RiP Doom

what's crazy also, a new Doom song was released 2 weeks ago ; it dropped after he died and no one knew :

 
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doggfather

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #7 on: January 02, 2021, 07:52:13 AM »
https://twitter.com/dggfthr

HELP

I'm an ol' school collecta from the 90's SO F.CK DIGITAL, RELEASE A CD!

RIP GANXSTA RIDD
RIP GODFATHER
RIP MONSTA O
RIP NATE DOGG
RIP BAD AZZ
 

The Predator

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #8 on: January 03, 2021, 03:26:51 AM »
Not heard much of his music but this is shocking. R.I.P.

The Special Herb instrumental volumes are really nice.

--------------------

MF Doom taken by 2020 as well.

A rare creative unique hip-hop talent that can never be replaced.

He repped that persona and mask hard and i really dug the way he used to sample those 70/80s cartoons...them sound effects were ill!

Quote
MF Doom, iconic masked hip-hop MC, dies aged 49

Rapper and producer known for multiple projects including Madvillain died in October, according to announcement by wife



MF Doom, one of US hip-hop’s most distinctive and respected MCs and producers, has died aged 49.

His wife Jasmine posted on his Instagram account:

The greatest husband, father, teacher, student, business partner, lover and friend I could ever ask for. Thank you for all the things you have shown, taught and given to me, our children and our family. Thank you for teaching me how to forgive beings and give another chance, not to be so quick to judge and write off. Thank you for showing how not to be afraid to love and be the best person I could ever be. My world will never be the same without you. Words will never express what you and Malachi mean to me, I love both and adore you always. May THE ALL continue to bless you, our family and the planet.

Her post indicated he died on 31 October. The cause of death was not announced.

MF Doom, AKA Daniel Dumile, was born in London in 1971, moving to New York as a child. He had a first flush of success in the early 1990s with the group KMD, signing to major label Elektra Records, but his burgeoning career collapsed with the death of his brother and bandmate DJ Subroc in 1993.

Following an itinerant few years living, in his words, “damn near homeless”, he returned to music in 1997 and adopted his now-iconic look, a mask similar to Marvel villain Dr Doom which he wore in public ever since; the cover of his debut album that year, Operation Doomsday, depicted him as the comic book character. He later adapted the mask to one worn by a character in the film Gladiator.

His most lauded era came in the early noughties, beginning with Take Me To Your Leader under the alias King Geedorah, which again plundered pop culture for samples and moods. He used another alias, Viktor Vaughn, before returning to MF Doom for second album Mm.. Food.

He explained his populous creative universe in 2011, saying: “The idea of having one different character all the time, to me, makes – to me – the story boring. I get that mainly from novels, that style of writing, or movies, where there’s multiple characters who carry the storyline.” He even populated the stage with different versions of himself – he was criticised for using a masked stand-in at some concerts, but argued: “Whoever plays the character plays the character.”

In 2004 he created what is widely regarded as his masterpiece album: Madvillainy, made with cratedigging producer Madlib, a dense, heady, soulful triumph of charismatic lyricism and brilliant sampling, and regarded by many music publications as one of the great albums of the decade.

Profile raised, MF Doom embarked on further starry collaborations, including with Danger Mouse on The Mouse and the Mask, and Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ghostface Killah, producing tracks for his albums Fishscale and More Fish and rapping together on tracks including Angelz. Other partnerships would come with leftfield hip-hop figures like Czarface and Jneiro Jarel, plus Flying Lotus, the Avalanches, and more. He was remixed by Thom Yorke, and later collaborated with Yorke and Radiohead bandmate Jonny Greenwood on a track called Retarded Fren.

In 2017, Dumile’s son Malachi Ezekiel died aged 14. Dumile paid tribute on Instagram, calling him “the greatest son one could ask for. Safe journey and may all our ancestors greet you with open arms. One of our greatest inspirations. Thank you for allowing us to be your parents. Love you, Mali.”

El-P, Ty Dolla $ign and Tyler, the Creator were among the artists paying tribute to MF Doom on Twitter. Flying Lotus said “my soul is crushed”, and added that the pair had been working on an EP together. Hip-hop radio DJ Peter Rosenberg called him “one of the most influential, unique and brilliant MCs of all time”.

Acclaimed rap producer Kenny Beats wrote: “I heard that some authors rewrote entire novels by the greats just to see how it felt. Denzel [Curry] and I made Unlocked talking about Doom every single day just trying to channel an ounce of the feeling.”




 
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doggfather

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #9 on: January 04, 2021, 12:27:19 AM »
https://twitter.com/dggfthr

HELP

I'm an ol' school collecta from the 90's SO F.CK DIGITAL, RELEASE A CD!

RIP GANXSTA RIDD
RIP GODFATHER
RIP MONSTA O
RIP NATE DOGG
RIP BAD AZZ
 

The Predator

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #10 on: January 05, 2021, 04:27:09 AM »
Quote
Hip-Hop Needs No Other Supervillain After MF DOOM
By Craig Jenkins
DOOM took the scenic route to recognition and earned a place in the annals of history on his own terms, but it’s hard to see this as a happy ending.



The most memorable villains possess not only terrifying power but also complex motives. In Star Wars, Darth Vader’s path to darkness is driven as much by the allure of the fantastical abilities he gets out of it as by the belief that these powers are the key to his family’s survival. X-Men’s Magneto loses faith in the goodness of humankind and becomes a mutant supremacist, having seen the worst we’re capable of as a German Jewish youth left to die in Hitler’s Polish death camps and later (after he escapes and his powers manifest) when a fearful, hateful mob murders his daughter while trying to purge the city of mutants. Doctor Doom, one of Marvel’s most intriguing big bads, dons his chilling metal mask after burning his face in an experiment gone wrong: He attempts to break into hell and steal the soul of his mother, a witch who cut a deal with the Devil for the power to save her people from a ruthless authoritarian leader but who died in the struggle and is cursed to eternal torment as payment for her request. The mask is a monument to pain and a promise to protect a people no matter the cost; Doom’s moves, cruel as they are, are rooted in a kind of cracked altruism. He shares his mother’s willingness to uplift his people by any means necessary.

The deeper you get into the lore, the more it makes sense for Daniel Dumile — the underground hip-hop titan whose sudden passing on October 31 at age 49 wasn’t announced to the world until the last day of 2020 — to feel a kinship with the Doctor. The rapper wore the mask for similar reasons. As members of the New York City rap trio K.M.D., Daniel and his younger brother Dingilizwe funneled years spent studying hip-hop music and culture into 1991’s Mr. Hood, an imperfect if promising debut (that is, in retrospect, all too often remembered through the lens of the developments that would follow, rather than on its own merits, much like the Fugees’ Blunted on Reality), which positioned the group as keepers of the flame of the darkly playful boom bap that had come together for groups like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest as the icy, programmed beats of the ’80s gave way to the layered, unpredictable sampling of the ’90s. (On Mr. Hood, you’re just as likely to encounter swatches of Sesame Street scenes as Malcolm X speeches.) The album sold just enough for legendary A&R rep Dante Ross to petition Elektra Records to foot the bill for a second K.M.D. album. In the new music, the Dumile brothers hewed darker, doubling down on social justice informed by their Black Muslim upbringing. But weeks before the album’s completion, Dingilizwe died, struck by a car while crossing an expressway on Long Island. And Elektra got cold feet about releasing K.M.D.’s sophomore effort, Black Bastards, being shaken by the cover art — on which the Sambo figure that had graced Mr. Hood’s cover was lynched in lurid detail — and the fear of a repeat of the national outrage that Ice-T’s “Cop Killer” had sparked in 1992. They let Dumile walk with his masters.
Operation: Doomsday promised to “destroy rap” in the first five minutes and did a notable job of pissing all over the precepts of mainstream hip-hop.

As with any captivating villain’s origin story, the exact details after that point differ a little with each telling, but the common threads are as follows: Terrified major labels treated Black Bastards like radioactive waste, functionally ending Dumile’s shot at a mainstream music career. Money and shelter were hard to come by over the next few years. In the late ’90s, Dumile reemerged, face covered, as MF DOOM, at first playing open-mic nights at Manhattan’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe — tape of the first of these exists thanks to New York hip-hop veteran Geng — and later recording for Rock Steady Crew member and WKCR legend Bobbito Garcia’s Fondle ’Em Records imprint, home to a small but impressive collection of releases from gifted rhymers like Kool Keith, the Juggaknots, Siah, and Yeshua. Operation: Doomsday, the 1999 debut MF DOOM album, promised to “destroy rap” in the first five minutes and did a notable job of pissing all over the precepts of mainstream hip-hop. The sample loops were messy, inspired, insouciant approaches to beloved standards. “Rhymes Like Dimes” chopped up session player Greg Phillinganes’s unforgettable solo on Quincy Jones and James Ingram’s “One Hundred Ways” as DOOM served drug metaphors and sex jokes. On “Doomsday,” he juxtaposed musings on death with melodies from Sade’s “Kiss of Life.”

The sense that DOOM had mastered rhyme and production but lacked interest in carrying out either in the traditional ways would hang over his next decade of offbeat, unpredictable solo and collaborative projects. Wearing a mask and speaking in the third person, DOOM wasn’t just playing around with golden-age comic book tropes; he was calling into question the relationship between identity and image in hip-hop at a time when artists were spending millions of dollars to look cool and asking the listenership to believe they lived every story they told. DOOM was the antithesis of the expensive disco-hit remakes and loud couture of the shiny-suit era into which Operation: Doomsday was released, warping the familiar and making it sound debased and crude while beat-makers like Diddy wore the sonics of the recent past like jewelry, such was the expense of procuring samples of well-known source material. In an era when clarity and simplicity were the keys to a hit record, DOOM dealt in riddles fans would unpack for years. You could luxuriate in the surface-level trappings for a lifetime, studying the interplay between ’60s horror and comic-book references, ’70s and ’80s soul music, and intricate New York City lore, or you could listen past it and commiserate with the hard living and loving that DOOM’s beats and puns gave cover for. This made his music a refuge for heads disillusioned by the pomp and polish of commercial turn-of-the-millennium rap as well as a gateway for new listeners lacking the lived experience to see their reflection in the stuff on the charts. DOOM bridged audiences, styles, and artists.

In his collaborative work, DOOM shared the spotlight with a constellation of underground stars. His songs with Manhattan-based Cuban and Puerto Rican rhymer Kurious endure — see Doomsday’s “?,” Take Me to Your Leader’s “Fastlane,” and “Benetton” from Kurious’s II. Unicron, the EP DOOM produced for San Francisco rapper Trunks, is underrated heat. Linking up with elusive West Coast rapper and beatsmith Madlib, DOOM scored (another) one of the greatest rap albums of all time, using curt, linear, impactful narratives to effect the speed and locomotion of hard-core punk on 2004’s Madvillainy. What’s true of the rest of the villain’s catalogue holds here: Assumptions are subverted at every turn. There’s heaviness in the chill moments and levity in places you’d least expect it. The kernel of sadness in the weed anthem “America’s Most Blunted” (“DOOM nominated for the best rolled L’s / And they wonder how he dealt with stress so well / Wild guess: You could say he stay sedated / Some say buddha’d, some say faded”) gives the impression that a song ostensibly about blazing is really about coping. You may think “Fancy Clown” is a beam of hurt directed at an ex and her new lover until you clock that what’s really going on is DOOM using his Viktor Vaughn alias to roast himself: “You wasn’t sorry when you sucked him off in the hallway / But have it your way: raw, no foreplay / That’s you if you want a dude who wear a mask all day.”

As the world caught up to DOOM’s strange ways, admirers from unexpected places came around. Thom Yorke, from Radiohead, and Four Tet were fans and eventual collaborators. Damon Albarn’s cartoon band Gorillaz, itself an offshoot of underground hip-hop (its 2001 self-titled debut album shares a producer with Kool Keith’s Dr. Octagonecologyst and Del tha Funkee Homosapien’s Deltron 3030), tapped DOOM to guest on the Demon Days highlight “November Has Come.” The latter led to a full-length album with Danger Mouse, who produced the Gorillaz record, and the stars of Cartoon Network’s madcap late-night animation block Adult Swim, on which DOOM’s working knowledge of weird American cartoons dovetailed with the jibing nostalgia and iconoclasm of titles like Sealab 2021 and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. The relationship put DOOM on television — both as a recurring character on the show Perfect Hair Forever and as a presence in memorable bumps like 2006’s “Christmas With MF DOOM” series — and in the line of sight of whatever kids and stoners stayed up to watch. That visibility, as much as the potency of his catalogue, would seed DOOM’s ideas in a new generation of hip-hop stars. Listening to the music of Odd Future, Joey Bada$$, Griselda Records, and any entity that treasures offbeat boom bap and off-kilter timing, you can trace ideas back through Metal Face records and DOOM beats. Where other legends might have rested on their laurels and legacy, DOOM spent as much of the 2010s on dream-team pairings with the likes of Flying Lotus and Ghostface Killah as on growing the profile of the young New York prodigy Bishop Nehru.
As we mourn the man, it behooves us to speak not just to his greatness but also to the closed-mindedness and cruelty that complicated his life and necessitated his dark turn.

DOOM took the scenic route to recognition and earned a place in the annals of history on his own terms, but it’s hard to see this as a happy ending, because as much as his story is one of subverting the accepted wisdom about compromising your artistry to increase its reach, it is also about how America treats immigrants who contribute to the richness of our culture, who give much of themselves and ask very little of the government but can’t get a fair shake. DOOM was raised on Long Island after being born in London in 1971 to parents from Zimbabwe and Trinidad. (In 2012, he told SPIN they’d been merely passing through.) This became an issue in 2010 when he stepped out to tour Europe behind 2009’s Born Like This and learned that he had been barred from reentering the country where he’d spent most of his life, a cruel side effect of a nation tightening its borders in the wake of 9/11.

DOOM changed the face of American music and never got to play another concert Stateside, a kiss just as cold as the rug being pulled out from under K.M.D. because a writer who’d never heard the record decided Black Bastards was incendiary material. So as we mourn the man, it behooves us to speak not just to his greatness but also to the closed-mindedness and cruelty that complicated his life and necessitated his dark turn. The villain made do; let’s stop making villains.
 
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Sccit

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #11 on: January 05, 2021, 07:05:21 AM »
any word on cause of death?

doggfather

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #12 on: January 08, 2021, 05:05:44 AM »
https://twitter.com/dggfthr

HELP

I'm an ol' school collecta from the 90's SO F.CK DIGITAL, RELEASE A CD!

RIP GANXSTA RIDD
RIP GODFATHER
RIP MONSTA O
RIP NATE DOGG
RIP BAD AZZ
 

The Predator

Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #13 on: January 08, 2021, 09:43:53 AM »
The Hannah-Barbara album would of been incredible with all those cartoon samples available for free.

Quote
How MF DOOM Became A Part Of The Adult Swim Family
Culture




Elijah C. Watson

For a handful of MF DOOM fans, Adult Swim served as the platform that introduced them to the late enigmatic rapper. Jason Demarco, Adult Swim’s Senior Vice President and Creative Director, talked with Okayplayer about how he brought DOOM into Adult Swim’s world.

On News Years Eve, it was announced that Daniel Dumile, the man behind one of hip-hop’s most enigmatic yet talented MCs of all time MF DOOM, had passed away on Halloween. Since the news was revealed by DOOM’s label Rhymesayers — and signed by his wife Jasmine —  fans and contemporaries have been paying tribute to Dumile and the musical world he created.

In these tributes, a handful of fans have shared how there was one particular pop-culture platform that introduced them to DOOM and sparked their reverence for the rapper — Adult Swim. The adult-oriented nighttime programming block that rose to prominence on Cartoon Network in the early 2000s has not only become known for its popular animated and live surreal television shows — and playing a part in introducing western audiences to anime alongside its sibling programming block Toonami — but for curating and introducing viewers to an eclectic selection of music. From those early commercial bumps that featured Flying Lotus or J Dilla to the singles available on their website, Adult Swim has championed left-of-center music across genres since its heyday, and that includes DOOM.

Jason Demarco, Adult Swim’s Senior Vice President and Creative Director, played a pivotal role in bringing DOOM into the world of Adult Swim. Demarco first heard Dumile’s music when he was still Zev Love X in KMD. The first rap cassette he ever bought was 3rd Bass’ The Cactus Album, which included the minor hit “The Gas Face,” which was Dumile’s debut appearance. By the time he had heard Operation: Doomsday, Demarco didn’t realize that the rapper was Dumile, unaware of the backstory that told of his absence following the dissolution of KMD after his brother Subroc died, and his reemergence as the rap game’s Dr. Doom.

Through Demarco, Adult Swim and DOOM went on to create some memorable — and at times culturally defining — moments. Of course, there’s The Mask and the Mouse Album that found DOOM rapping over Danger Mouse beats sampling Adult Swim shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021. But there were other moments that fans have also reminisced on amid DOOM’s death, like him voicing a giraffe on Perfect Hair Forever or him doing Christmas bumps in between shows. Now, working with DOOM didn’t always end favorably, as Demarco has shared on social media. But in working with DOOM, he had not only found a creative partner but a friend — someone who, behind the mask, was a lighthearted and warm dude who loved classic cartoons.

We spoke with Demarco about how Adult Swim and DOOM’s relationship came together, the impact of “All Caps” soundtracking one of The Boondocks‘ most memorable scenes, the DOOM and Hannah-Barbera follow-up to The Mouse and the Mask that never came to be, and more.

How did Adult Swim’s creative relationship with Doom come about? What was the initial thing that kicked it all off?

So that came about because Brian Burton [Danger Mouse] and I have a long history together. I started using his music in our Toonami programming block when he was still DJ Danger Mouse and he was an artist. He had an alter ego for a while called Pelican City, and I bought a Pelican City CD and I really liked it. I called him and basically asked if he wanted to do beats for a Cartoon Network and Toonami and he said yes. So, he had been doing music for us for a couple of years at that point. And he went to the UK and during this he didn’t have a job. He basically said, “Hey, I want to do this move but I don’t want to screw up where we have going, but I don’t really have any other income. So can you be giving me money to make music?” I said, “Yeah, of course.”

So while he was there, he got the deal with Lex records or Electro, and he was developing a couple of things at the same time. But he somehow met DOOM, and basically he came to us and said, “Hey, DOOM loves cartoons. And I’m already doing music for you guys. What if DOOM and I did a Toonami album?” And I said, “I don’t think a Toonami album makes sense, but an Adult Swim album might make sense because we use a lot of old cartoons that we repurpose, and that’s what DOOM does in his music.” He said, “Let me talk to him.” And then when he talked to him, he was like, “Oh my God, DOOM was a huge fan of Adult Swim already.” And that was sort of what started the ball rolling.

Did you think it was going to be as successful as it was?

I hoped it would be successful, but it was way more successful than we thought it would be. It almost went gold, which is crazy. Obviously, that type of album wouldn’t do those kinds of numbers today. This was right before the bottom dropped out of the music industry in terms of buying CDs. But it did really well, and it ended up on a ton of best of lists that year. I think it hit a nerve that we weren’t expecting it to at all. For sure. We don’t really make anything with the expectation that it’s going to be some big success. We just kind of make the things we think are interesting, and they either become big successes or they don’t. And this was one of those things that just — it went broader than I would’ve thought it would have to be honest, but I was really happy watching it the whole time.

What do you remember most vividly during that time?

As I’m sure anyone who’s ever collaborated with DOOM would tell you, he kind of sets his own pace and he does things his own way. And he was always like that. So one of the jobs I had was to make sure that he would show up to the studio. And sometimes that involves picking him up at his apartment, and sometimes it involves just going to the studio so he knew I would be there because he liked the idea that we were both fans of the same stuff. And he felt comfortable that he was with people who understood him.

So a lot of that was like, I would show up at DOOM’s house at 9:00, he was not answering his door. OK. Show back up at 10:00, but he’s still not answering the door. Typical rapper shit to be honest. But with DOOM you never held it against him. You would get there and he was so friendly, so sweet, and just wanted to hang out. And he would have his notebooks and he’d just be constantly writing in those notebooks, and looking at them and thinking about rhymes. And he had multiple notebooks of things he had jotted down, and I kind of feel like he would just pull different things together in the song. Almost in the moment, the whole song would be written on paper. He would have different verses from different places, and then he would play them off each other.

I wasn’t there for a lot of the actual recording of the album because I just wanted to stay out of the way. I was there for all the stuff like getting the Cartoon Network soundbites, making sure the samples rotate, helping them get the guests, all that stuff. So, mostly what I remember is DOOM coming in the office, or me going to pick DOOM up and just hanging out with him and talking about cartoons because he could talk about cartoons literally all day long.

Did DOOM have a favorite show on Adult Swim? Did you happen to make him a fan of anime at all?

I don’t think DOOM messed with the anime. He knew the anime that anyone growing up in New York would know from what was on basic cable in the ’80s. So he knew Vultron and Star Blazers. I think he liked that. But his heart was all in the Hanna-Barbera stuff. He loved Sealab 2021 and Aqua Team Hunger Force. Aqua Team, I think, was pretty much his favorite of what Adult Swim made. As far as old cartoons, obviously his favorite Hanna-Barbera cartoon is Fantastic Four because that’s where he pulled of all of his samples from. But he loved all classic cartoons basically. He could tell you what episode a certain thing happened in, like The Pink Panther Show. We talked about the Pink Panther a bunch. He just loved that vibe of the old crunchy cartoons with the goofy voiceovers from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s.



I feel like one of the main moments in which my generation was introduced to DOOM was “All Caps” being played while Huey and Bushido Brown fight in The Boondocks. Did you have any involvement in terms of some of the Madvillainy songs being included in that episode or was that Aaron Mcgruder and his team?

I wish I could take credit for that, but no that was all Aaron. Aaron McGruder is a fan of that kind of hip-hop, and that era, particularly, of hip-hop that Madvilliany was from. He still references that now. What I did was sort of bring DOOM into the wider scope of Adult Swim, in terms of using his voice in promos and commercials, using his music on the air, bumps, and all these other places. And then also him ending up on Perfect Hair Forever as a character during the pilot that he did with MC Chris, the Christmas time where he hosted our Christmas marathon. That’s sort of where I helped bring DOOM into the family. In terms of him being in that Boondocks episode, as far as I recall, they knew they wanted that music and reached out to get it because he’s a massive fan.

How did you feel witnessing that moment and seeing it on TV? When I think of Adult Swim, that’s one of the main scenes I always think about. Just how well it was sequenced and how the music just perfectly paired with that moment.

I’ve been lucky enough to live through a couple of things like that, and be involved with a few projects that kicked off in a bigger way. But you never really know when you’re doing it. What I am always trying to do is, “OK, what’s the next thing we’re going to do?” Just keep building on it. So when a moment like that happens, it’s very rare that you go, “Wow, this is the moment.” But you’re just happy it happened afterward.

On Twitter, you had talked about how Adult Swim had signed DOOM for a record deal. Unfortunately, the record never came to fruition. But were there any talks about what the album would encompass? Was it going to be something similar to the DangerDOOM stuff?

The idea was — I said, “Why don’t we sign you? And then we own Hanna-Barbera. Why don’t we give you the rights to use all that music in those shows and those vocal samples, and you can just do a DOOM record where you literally can dive into all that stuff that you love?” And he was super into that. And that was originally what it was going to be, basically him just doing another DOOM album. But this time he would have all of the Hanna-Barbera library to use as sample sources, without having to worry about getting in trouble. Because at that time his profile was getting big enough that he couldn’t really afford to do what he did on Operation: Doomsday and just sample whatever the hell he wanted.

But I think he was thinking about his future. And I was just like, “On a practical level here, we’ve got a whole library, man. Use it and we’ll pay you on top of that.” And I think that’s why he signed the deal. Then, unfortunately, he just took the money and disappeared. Sometimes the gamble you take when you work with an artist who is mercurial like DOOM — I mean, I did not expect that that was going to happen. But it happens sometimes when you work with creative people who their whole life is their creativity, and it’s not like he was a banker or a businessman that’s going to keep certain hours. So, it’s like, you kind of know that risk when you jump into something with anyone in a creative level. But it was a bummer that he just disappeared.

Yeah. I could imagine when you first gave him the idea he felt like a kid in a candy store. Like, actually having free reign of those samples.

He did. But I think he had things that happened in his personal life. And I don’t know all of them, I just know some of them. But I think he just had a hard couple of years. DOOM is a person who would have his personal struggles — part of his whole mystique is his personal struggles, and the most interesting part for the average fan is the way he rose from the ashes and created this DOOM character. But what nobody who doesn’t know him really well wants to talk about or realizes is that his whole life was like that — ups and downs. He lived an interesting life and had a lot of shit go down. And all the way up until getting locked out of his own country and his place of growing up.

So, I don’t know all the what happened in between. But I just know for whatever reason, he wasn’t able to make the record and he didn’t want to. He called for a couple of years after that, and I just didn’t pick up the phone because when somebody screws you, whether they meant to or not, you kind of take it personal. But I think he knew he dropped the ball. But, at the same time, I was doing other things and just always looking forward. And I wasn’t like, “Oh, I hate DOOM.” I just was like, “I just blew $45 grand on him. I can’t get my network to work with him anymore.” Straight up, nobody I worked for would let me work with him. So then when that dust settled, it took a long time. But I still tried to bring him back in because I just missed being able to work with him because he’s such a genius talent. And that’s how the Missing Notebook Rhymes [series] came around. I thought things had calmed down in his life, and he was sort of ready to do something bigger again.


Speaking to that series, the remaining half of it has still gone unreleased. Was there a particular one you were really looking forward to sharing?

Yeah, there’s a couple, but I don’t know what’s going to happen to it in the wake of his death. He had made record deals with labels that he owed music to, and he frankly had projects with artists, other producers, other rappers that he didn’t necessarily have the right to just give to us. They belong to other people too — like, when you make a track, it’s the producer and the rappers and sometimes the person you sample as a publisher, and then sometimes the label. They all get a cut, and DOOM was just handing us tracks like, “No, no, it’s all good.”

But unfortunately, what happened is that as those songs released, every week we would have some new pissed off person who would be like, “Why is this song out? This is our song,” or “This is my song” or “This is something DOOM and I worked on, and we haven’t figured out what we were going to do with it yet. He didn’t even tell me that he sold it to you.” So, we eventually just had to pull the plug because we were worried about if we were going to get sued, and we didn’t want to piss off other people. And even before pulling it down, we said to DOOM, “Hey man, if you have other songs that are not these songs that you do own 100% of, let us know.” But he didn’t — at least he didn’t at the time or he didn’t think he could give us.

So, he was capable of being a bad business partner. But he was also capable of being an amazing business partner, and he was capable of being an amazing human being. I worked with a lot of different people over the years and a lot of musicians, and very few bring DOOM’s level of intent and quality and love and thoughtfulness. And that’s one reason I personally — maybe I’m just a sucker, but couldn’t stay mad at him. There was even a period where I had a hard time listening to his music because I got in such trouble over working with him. But I couldn’t stay away.

    And here is one of the paintings he made for me. We bonded over our mutual love of the Pink Panther cartoons, so he painted one of the bad guys from those shorts. It’s always been something I cherish but it will hold a special, and sad significance now. pic.twitter.com/bAFn9nsZLE

    — SPIRAL CURSE DEMARCO (@Clarknova1) January 1, 2021

Was there a dream collaboration you always wanted to do with DOOM within Adult Swim? Was there ever talks of trying to have him have his own animated TV show or something?

At Adult Swim, I can’t tell you the number of rappers we have either had come to us wanting to do a show, or we developed things with. It’s just very, very hard. DOOM had a great persona but the fact is, it was basically a rip-off of a huge Marvel property. So doing a show as DOOM is going to be tough. And I think my bosses really wanted to figure out how to use him because he has such a distinctive voice and a distinctive sense of humor, and that’s how he ended up in shows like Perfect Hair Forever. But doing a show and being an amazing creative and musician are two totally different skillsets, and I think DOOM would not necessarily have been as good at being the star of a show or the creator of a show as he was at being DOOM. And that’s not taking anything away from him. I just think it didn’t happen because it wasn’t really meant to happen. So there wasn’t really a dream project that didn’t happen, though the dream project that I wanted to help make happen is the DOOMSTARKS album, which I really wanted to happen.

When you had the DangerDoom Adult Swim performance, DOOM had told you that it’s the mask that’s what’s important and not the man. Do you agree with that sentiment?

I will say that I understood where he was coming from. I think if you were to try to do what he was trying to sell us, which is, “This is a conceptual art thing, this isn’t just me as an MC,” I think there’s an interesting idea there. I really do. I think to pull that off would require more effort and support than DOOM had. If you wanted to do the Doombot thing, you would have to make it a way bigger gesture so that the audience understands ahead of time and they don’t feel ripped off. I think what he liked was the audience not knowing. He liked that tension.
 

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Re: RIP MF DOOM
« Reply #14 on: March 10, 2021, 06:25:00 PM »
Most likely we’ll never know cause of death

RIP DOom he had some dope shit no doubt