The year is 1998 and we're inside the city. The rustic brick walls of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Like most nights here, the place is packed. Stepping onto the cafe's modest stage to perform next is wearing a loose white tank top, a red filly's hat, and pantyhose 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 Nuyorican, the humble A multi-cultural 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 York region was a major became the epicenter for the East Coast blossoming underground hip-hop scene on

You might catch Mos Def or Talib Kweli debuting a new verse. See an Improv 2 performance by Black Thought, Common, and Questlove. Or witness a hungry, pre-famed M&M backed only by a cassette tape. That prided themselves on the art of lyricism, performing at the Nuyorican had become a rite of passage. Such are the circumstances tonight for the man now holding the mic with pantyhose over his face. As Daniel Dumoulet. But tonight, he's performing for the first time under his new alias, an alter ego the hip-hop world would soon know as rap's masked supervillain, one of the most fascinating, mysterious, influential emcees of a generation, MF 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 of this video, I'm going to be talking about the most famous, most famous,

Doom just had two singles out on a small but influential indie label, but the kind of focus… that filled the Nuyorican 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 New Doom singles. According to DJ Nasty Buzz, who organized the show that night, the place was frenetic. When Doom took the stage, 90% of the crowd already knew every word to every song he did. It was fucking magical. Forming at the Njörekinn was a rite of passage that MF Doom had been knighted. At least that's how it's remembered today. The legend of that night is one of many in the lore of Daniel Duhamel's transformation into the enigmatic 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. MF 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 offer in 1999's Operation Doomsday was an instant cult classic that introduced his new comic inspired character and established... This doomed, surreal, free-associative rhyme recited over raw, self-produced beat. After continuing to build out Doom's musical universe with projects from his other characters King Ghidorah and Victor Bond, the next solo release under the MF Doom moniker was 2004's Mmfood, an idiosyncratic concept album in which all figures were

teen tracks are about, well, food. It's an absurd recipe that only Doom could somehow cook to perfection. However, the undisputed... Who did Crown Jewel of M.F. Doom's wonderfully weird discography came just months before Received 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 Villain. Living off borrowed time, the clock tick faster That'll be the hour they knock the slick blaster Tripping off the beat kinda, dripping off the meat grinder He's 9er, pimping, stripping, soft sweet minor The rest is empty with no brain But the cover nerd, the best MC with no chain ever heard So nasty that it's probably somewhat of a travesty Having me, Diddy told the people you can call me your majesty In this 12th season of Dissect, we're celebrating the life and art of M.F. Doom by dissecting some of the supervillain's most beloved works. Today's introduction is a bit of a episode will cover Daniel Duhamel'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-line, beat-by-beat analysis of Matt Villani.

Finish the series by dissecting a handful of Doom's most revered tracks from Mmfood. Study, we'll discover why MF Doom is widely praised as one of the most gifted, anomalous MCs to ever touch a mic. Why a Weeping range of contemporary artists from Tyler the Creator to Thom Yorke to The Weeknd Rape Doom as an indispensable influence. Why, some 25 years later, that same emphatic adoration and excitement for Doom heard in the Nuyorican that night still resounds. As loud as ever. And so with that and without further ado let's dissect. This episode is brought to you by Maybelline New York. Get ready to bring the heat. With Maybelline's newest lip plumping gloss, Lifter Plump. Fair warning though, it's hot. Like, literally.

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Dooms referring to himself in third person, describing the intentional mystique constructed around the character he created. Between the man and the man who wears the mask. Thus, as we begin to walk back the path of Daniel Dumoulet'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. The New York City area, frequently moving around the city while attending elementary school in Manhattan.

Dialects. By 1983, Daniel and his family had settled in Long Island, New York, home to pioneer Became enamored with hip hop but had to listen to it in secret when his mom was away at work. We happen to catch one of these radio stations just from being, you know, my mom's had like a little clock radio, you know Yeah, she's a nurse so she We always had the clock radio with the alarm on it. When the alarm go off for her to go to work at night, that's when we would get up. Real quiet, you know what I mean? That's how we used to catch the ill late-night shows. It was awesome, too. That was like our re-emergence, like, Damn, we found it again. You know what I'm saying? -Growing up in the proximity to the birth and rapid growth of hip-hop.

Daniel and his younger brother Dingolizwe bonded over their love of this blossoming culture. The two were incredibly close, with Doom later recalling that it always seemed like me and him was twins, or it might have even seemed that he was older, like his spirit was older. The Dumoulin 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 Sub Rock and their friend allowed him to play the guitar. Lonzo Hodge assumed the name Onyx the Birthstone Kid. Alright, now what does KMD stand for? Cause in much damage. When I say cause in much damage, I mean a positive cause in a - My family's society. - Mm-hmm. Now how'd you guys get together? - Well, me and my brother had some rock. We used to be down back in the day, 'cause my brother--

Yeah, we used to listen to a lot of radio and stuff, different hip hop shows, you know, through that, right? We got into 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 things are the most important. The 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. It stood for causing much damage. Then it was more like cause in 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. Daniel's alias, Zevlove X, was also created within Daniel's family. Pension, a concoction of words and letters born from semantic experimentation. 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 back then. Backwards. Between KMD and his own moniker, we can see from the start that Daniel was very much into This video. 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, 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 Zev Love X. A cat's face can either be a smile or a smirk. When a pair's a monkey race to learn one's clockwork. Perkin is good to the... In 1989, before KMD... AMD released any music of their own. Daniel, aka Zevlove X, landed a feature on a song called The Gas Face by Third Bass, a New York City hip-hop group signed to Def Jam Records. The Gas Face became a hit song. It, reaching number 5 on the US rap charts and eventually achieving gold status. The boys even got to perform at the same time. It live on The Arsenio Hall Show. Along with becoming a classic song from hip hop's golden era, The Gas Face also holds Daniel Dumoulin or Zevlov X's first appearance on a record. It would prove to be a life-altering

The attention of A&R's Dante Ross at Elektra Records, which at the time touted a roster Brand Nubian, Grand Pooba, Del the Funky Homosapien, Pete Rock and CL Smooth and leaders of The New School. Dante signed came... D to Elektra in 1990 when Zev and Subrok were just 18 and 16 years old respectively. 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 brothers unique creative process. So Doom would start a lot of the beats like he 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 was Sub. Sub was more technically adept and they worked in tandem but but Sub Rock was more the producer.

Which people don't really know. 1991, KMD released their debut album, Mr. Hood. The album's title is the name of the Project Central character, which the brothers created by cutting up audio for the album. From a Spanish-language instructional vinyl. -My name is Jose Gonzalez. I'm Jose Gonzalez. My name is Mr. Hood. What is your name? I'm Zumwalt X with KMD. I am pleased to meet you. Oh yeah, likewise. It was uncanny.

Me 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 second guessing. 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. 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, we get him down, he gets through his skull, he starts being more 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. 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 lay This time his favorite experience in hip-hop with the young brothers now ages 20 and 18 having a

of age type experience being exposed to all that came with life on tour. Their manager and third base member Pete Nice would later reflect quote KMD came in as a Basically like this innocent group of 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 Subroc come into my office several times with a machete in his coat and I'd be like, you gotta calm down man. Dante Ross would also note that quote in between records both as people and as artists. They were hanging out in the

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 SubRoc 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. 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. I did the first record. So that's an age where it's real formative years where you're going into manhood and whatnot.

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 a record. I think that's where you get a lot of the 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, a little bit like, ♪ So gon' do all of them ♪ ♪ I got a brand new 380 in the box ♪ ♪ Made like blocks ♪ ♪ Two packs of bullets ♪ ♪ Two clips, don't say key lock ♪ 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, Subroc was hit by a car while walking

across a Long Island Expressway. He would And played Black Bastards for those in attendance. Fittingly, the album ends with a final sign-off from Sub Rock himself. After Sub Rock's passing, Daniel increasingly turned to substances for In a rare interview with 4080 Magazine less than a year after Sub's death, he told Elliott Wilson that The way shit is now, I rarely get a chance to feel good. I get high to keep my mind off the everyday bullshit.

Also tell the source during this time that I feel like a fucking piece of bullshit. Daniel was determined to release Black Bastards to the world in honor of his late brother. By the end of 1993, Daniel was released to the world in honor of his late brother. He'd completed the remaining work on the album himself. This included hand-drawing the cover art, which depicts the racist caricature of the artist. Sambo being hung by a noose. Originally a pro-slavery propaganda image, the Sambo character portrayed black men as simple-minded, docile servants who were happy to obey their masters. Since Mr. Hood came diesel. Logo with Samba with a slash across his face, an image meant to symbolize a rejection of stereotypes. The Black Bastard's cover was a continuation of this theme.

So we're hanging the character, which represents the same thing. It's the ending or the deading of that stereotype. At the same time, it represents the hangman game, where letters are missing out of the... So it's like a puzzle. The whole record's 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. Single. 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 scheduled release date,

Daniel was unexpectedly summoned to the Electra offices. We were at a session. We got a call from Electra. 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 were talking about the Had everything planned out already. Like they knew how everything was going to end before we said anything. 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 in places where they had financial interests. 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 seeing the album cover, it was a speaking to Daniel about his art, she published a piece scolding the executives at Warner Brothers, the major label that owned Electra. 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, Elektra chose to backlash. Electra chose to be the best. 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 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 And the day we showed up for the meeting, he told Doom, he's like, I'm gonna give you back your masters. I'm gonna write you a check for X amount of money. And I'm gonna let you go. And Doom really seemed unfazed by it. In one of my offices, I had a case of wine and he... I have to open a bottle and meet him and drink 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 will. I walked downstairs out of the building drunk and that was it. And it was a decision that I've always thought was absolute crock of shit.

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. the world. 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 dead. 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. Within the span of a year Less than five years after his pivotal gas face feature, Daniel Duhamelay 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, Hero Daniel Dumoulin would disappear into the shadows, into the layer of his mind, marking

of Zevlove X and the beginning of the folklore legend of MF Doom. That's right after the break. This episode is brought to you by NetSuite by Oracle. Things are expensive these days, especially for businesses from the materials, the distribution, borrowing, wages, everything costs more. Businesses are making the smart choice and graduating the NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud financial system. Accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform and one source of truth. Reduce costs and headaches. This is how you do it. It's never a bad idea to save money. Like right now we got, you know, summer's coming up. Do you wanna go away? Are you renting a place? You doing an RBNB, going to a hotel? money for all that stuff, why not try to save some money now? Over 30...

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Between Zeblove's disappearance in 1994 and the emergence of doom in 1997 would remain shrouded in mystery and rumor. Thus because the folklore version of this period mirrors the history of the world, the Here's your typical comic book origin story where a powerless, down-and-out man betrayed by society transforms himself into a villain and re-emerges to seek his revenge. revenge. We do know some things about Daniel's three-year absence from the public eye. For a time, he became a drifter, telling Hawaii. Hush you 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 always creating. So we'd still be drinking our 40s and tripping and making music.

Still working, but it was definitely a dark period you could definitely tell he was going through 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 The shit was hard and dark, but that's where a lot of it is. Next stage was coming from. He basically chucked me on how they say the lemons and was making lemonade, man. 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? So one time or another in a day, maybe using some of my genetics or whatever, but I look at it like it's an obstacle that helps me climb up. Attributed to like science like you know you got a laboratory experiment going on and you might not

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 then it must be this You know what I mean? So yeah, it kind of helped out with the whole re-emergence. That was gonna 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 to 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 Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Company Flow, look to preserve the musical and lyrical integrity of the genre, with independent record labels like Rockus, Stones Throw, and Fondulum playing a critical role in the genre's music. Role in breaking and distributing underground artists. Fondulum Records in particular would become pivotal in Daniel's public return to rap. The label

was Bobbito 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 is no mention of KMD or Zevlev-X during the broadcast. He was now referred to only as MF Doom. M.F. Doom would freestyle over a total of four beats during his se- where he'd make a number of references to his new alias.

As we just heard, the end of Doom's freestyle was... Punctuated by an announcement of his debut release on Bobbito's Fondulum Records, a self-produced three-track 12-inch released in May of 1991. MfDoom wasted no time. 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 Supervillain,

Formally introducing himself to the world. ♪ He is super ♪ ♪ Super metal finger villain chilling ♪ ♪ Super metal finger villain chilling ♪ -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 Bobbito appearance, Doom makes no overt mention of KMD or Zevlev-X on the dead-bent 12-inch. For all intents and purposes, MF Doom was a brand... Artist and for Daniel it was a creative blank slate a chance to be reborn and I'll really I'll just continue on with the ideas I had my head and I developed the doom character and develop the songs and more of the

I sipped around the character. I came with a different lyrical style, a different... I try to really make it distinctly different from the Zevlove X character. Like how you would have the characters in the book, like, you know, that different, you know? - Like KMD and Zevlove X, the name MF Doom... Gains a multitude of meanings. Doom was the nickname his mother gave him as a child, a play on their last name, Doomalay. Thus, when it came time to formally construct a character around this name, Daniel would A natural kinship with the Marvel comic book super villain Doctor Doom, who we'll talk more about in our next episode. The MF in 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 donned by the villain. If he was rapping, it was metal fingers.

Face, a reference to the metal mask 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 deep-fakes the sound of the sound. 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, slurred, 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 Gastroz. The song was the second track on Doom's debut with Fondolim, but he actually recorded a demo of the song back in '94 while still Zeb love and Here's that early version. Now let's compare this with the '97 Doom version of Gastroz, noticing the distinct

tone and flow. We can hear a similar contrast when comparing two different versions of Doom's Deadbin verse, which he first recorded as a feature for an unreleased remix of the song Feel It by I'm in D. And now the same verse on Dead Bend. In Dead Bend's opening couplet, the first of This is a video of the 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 hold their girls tight, but I ain't after her, probably your Acura, Pearl White.

Along with the two syllable and rhyme of girls tight and pearl white, each line in the couplet also contains an internal rhyme, Mike and tight in the first and the three syllable after her and Acura 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. Two years before Doom's debut full length LP would be released when the character was fully presented to the world. Doom released two more singles with Fondulum and also made that debut live appearance at the N.E.R. weekend while wearing pantyhose 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. -There'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 sound like. Me before, you know, you really was going off the sound of the record. Straight skills. See, once it started getting more. Publicize and you know 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. 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 artist look 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 Kia wrote,

Counting his role in its construction, from cheap spray painted plastic mask to the iconic custom made metal mask we know today. 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 Darth Maul. It was red and black. Spray painted it silver, aluminum, rustoleum, and he rocks that in the first video he's got that. But then what we did was we went out and found 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... 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 They can get it, you know what I'm saying? It's like a little bit of theater in it, you know what I'm saying? Since there's a stage there, you might as well utilize the stage to come up. -Cross, you know, in a theatrical way as well as lyrical, you know what I'm saying, and sound-wise, you know what I mean? So it's really just taking from theater and just making the presentation a theatrical one and expressing that character. -This kind of thoughtful character development

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'd donned a mask. Of course there's irony in the fact that a mask intended to de-emphasize the character's performance. 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 the story. Like throw a mask on. 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. 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. Wait 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, you know, 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 full of children. And you know, it was like a Robin Hood kind of character. But then the powers that be 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, recalling the same kind of thematic undertones as KMD's Sambo character. He told The Wire quote, From the point of view of America, we're the villains. But I'm the supervillain. 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. It represents anybody. Anybody in here could wear the mask, and be it a female male, female, any race, so-called race, you know what I mean? It's about where you're coming from.

From your heart, you know what I'm saying? What is 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 uncloak our own insecurities. Thus, as we prepare embark on our dissection of the music of MF 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. Selection. While Daniel doled out pieces of his new character with the fondness of his new costume, the

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 Operation Doomsday, an album that represents the culmination of Daniel Dumoulet's five years of plotting in the shadows, an album that will unpack next time on Dice.

Today's episode of Dissect was written by Camden Ostrander and me, Cole Kushner. Episode, please tell a friend about the new season, leave a review wherever you're listening, or share on social media tagging @dissectpodcast. All of this is available on iTunes. This really goes a long way in the sustainability of the show. Audio editing at original score by Kevin Poole. Additional production assistance by Justin Sales. Theme music by Birocratic. All right, thanks everyone. Talk to you next week. - This episode is brought to you by Empower. You got money questions like, can I retire early?

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