So much this. Man's the GOAT. And learning about his death months after is so DOOM. Condolences to the family. I like to think he was a legend at home like he was in the booth.
Madvillainy is maybe the best hiphop album of all time. I go back and listen to it often and always find something new.
+1 on changing the post title to all caps. This news also probably deserves a black bar. MF DOOM was the greatest lyricist in hiphop and influenced a generation or more of artists.
Agreed. And Madlib was always promising there'd be a sequel, but from what I understand MF DOOM always flaked. So all we have is that one perfect album.
I think part of the all caps thing thing is world building and relates to the graffiti influence in hip hop. All caps being and hand style used in many graffiti tags (and the MF DOOM tag). With DOOM a lot of the time you have to infer the meaning of a rhyme from what you know about DOOMs influence and his other works.
"He write "VIK" in a sick demented handstyle" -Viktor Vaughn (another alias), Raedawn.
MF DOOM used language in such a unique way. Whenever your thoughts seem to settle into well-worn ruts, you can listen to some MF DOOM and all those weird bars and rhymes will stir things up in your noggin. There's nothing quite like it :) Glad to see the man appreciated here on HN. RIP!
Thank you DOOM for your unique and creative views on life and your perseverance through unforeseeable tragedy. Listening to Black Bastards and then Operation Doomsday is like watching a person's sanity snap in a moment before your eyes - but from the ashes emerged the Metal Faced master. We all wear our masks, some are just shiner than others.
Vaudeville Villain is possibly my favourite work by him and i didn't like it on release. It was very much an album ahead of it's time and has grown on me massively with time.
The extremely distinctive MARTA train sample in 'Lickupon' actually makes me cri evrytiem as a native Georgian who misses Atlanta a lot https://youtu.be/gupcleKD5dw?t=144
Huh, I always thought that sample was from the BART in the Bay Area. The two sound really familiar. Thanks for sharing, that’s my favorite track of his.
MF DOOM brought me and so many others joy over a long and mind-blowing career. He had a varied set of collaborators, and just so many artistic achievements. So much of his work is now seminal in underground hip-hop (Madvillainy, Operation Doomsday, King Geedorah are just the first to come my to mind). It’s hard to overstate the impact he had with his meticulously constructed rhyme schemes and lyrics, and his unique tone and artistry in production. I also greatly appreciated the humor and liveliness he brought to his work.
I have to admit that this was really hard for me to process at first, and it will probably be that way for a while. I think this is the first time an artist I love so much has passed away. His music buoyed me through hard times and gave color to happy times.
Best wishes to his family, and those who knew him and worked with him closely. Undoubtedly he has left a beautiful and inscrutable mark on this world, and the world is better for it.
He is responsible for one of Wikipedia's more persistent edit wars. He preferred his name to be styled in all caps, but Wikipedia's style guide requires names to be capitalized more conventionally.
His Wikipedia page therefore suffered fairly persistent revert-wars until it was recently made semi-protected.
Sounds like it's straight out of a "falsehoods programmers believe about names" article. I was going to pose my opinion on the topic, then realised WP being WP, that horse has already been flogged by committee.
This is a knife in the gut right now. I had listened to him on and off since 05 or so. Just recently, I rediscovered "The Mouse and the Mask" and have been humming the bars to Sofa King for the last week or two.
I think it's one of his most underrated albums- at least I never hear about people talk about it. I had it burned to a CD because my college car was too old to have anything else. I would only go through the effort of burning CDs I loved front to back and this was one of the most-played. The Space Ghost song near the end used to make me feel nostalgic. Now I feel nostalgic for that nostalgia... meta-nostalgia?
MF DOOM is the name I would give when asked my favorite artist, across medium. His beat tape Special Herb is the name I would give when asked my desert island album. You brought immense joy to me and my friends, thank you.
Wow, very sad. I remember listening to Accordion[1] for the first time and thinking it sounded like no hiphop I'd heard before (no chorus, really unconventional song structure, dense lyrics, an accordion providing the hook). That was the gateway to the rest of DOOM's discography for me.
This really is hard man, its hit me harder than I'd like to admit. MF DOOM really was one of the greats and it's humbling to see so much love on hn for him.
Saw his "Doomposter" show in Chicago back in 2010 when a little person lip synced his songs in costume. Kind of irritating at the time but it's one of my most memorable shows and I remember Mos Def trying to calm down the crowd. RIP. Love all the Doom stuff, Madvillainy, Metal Fingers Special Herbs, and more.
Mm Food and Doomsday, all time greatest hip hop albums. He's the most brilliant rappers to exist. Not even an exaggeration. From concept, to title, to lyrics, to album as a whole cohesive piece of work... you'll have a hard time finding anything that comes close (maybe Quas or Jay Electronica... maybe)
That whole album. I can listen to it on repeat and never bore. I don't think I've ever managed to sit through a whole album by anybody but DOOM, and here he is, looping to no end.
Reality is, years don't mark anything. People have been saying "x year is the worst" increasingly for the last 4 years, and 2020 is the only recent one that actually fits. Tomorrow isn't going to shift anything, it's just how we keep track of time. Expecting a year to contain itself is what leads to this yearly disappointment everyone seems to experience. What I find frustrating, is that all people can say about most deaths now a day is "this year is the worst". No sentiments, nothing about the person who's passed. Just self absorbed focus on how this year sucks (they all suck apparently if I were to listen to people yearly). I wish we'd celebrate the person by default instead.
MF DOOM was one of the greats. One of the only reasons I could get into hip hop. Really heartbreaking.
> Expecting a year to contain itself is what leads to this yearly disappointment everyone seems to experience.
This thought reminds me of Utah Phillips in Ani DiFranco's song "Bridges":
> Fifties, sixties, seventies, nineties, that whole idea of decade packages. Things don’t happen that way. The Vietnam War heated up in 1965 and ended in 1975. Well, what’s that got to do with decades? No, that packaging of time is a journalistic convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important events and important ideas. I defy that.
(And I say this having myself just told a family member that I'm sure people everywhere are happy for 2020 to be over.)
I don't think there's any genre of music that gets even close to the potential expressivity and depth of hip-hop. It's words on sick beats. And there are some amazing wordsmiths out there.
One of the true greats, very deeply saddened to hear this. Growing up he meant a lot to me. It was just the other day I was trying to find out if he was going to drop a new album.
MF DOOM did a song called "Iron Rose" with Cannibal Ox that, per Spotify, I listened to more times in 2020 than any other song, and I listen to songs I like on repeat a lot.
I was a little surprised how much DOOM I listened to on Spotify in 2020. I two tracks from MM...FOOD in my top 20 (the other was Guinnesses (feat. Angelika & 4ize) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MW4d-Cp19E), and some collaborations (J Dilla, Avalanches/Danny Brown) farther down the list.
This is sad. I didn't even know his real name (Daniel Dumile), nor that he was actually British (mostly raised in NY). Weird to mourn the passing of someone you've never met and barely knew anything about, but he was only 49. Like a friend of mine once said in response to another artist's death: "something that brought me joy has disappeared from this world." He will be missed.
I think back to the line "MF DOOM, he's like D.B. Cooper" off of Hoe Cakes on the album MM..FOOD. He always was an enigma, and I guess having your passing be a secret for that long, for someone that influential, in the age of social media, just goes to show that it wasn't just an act.
Long time MF DOOM fan. Saw him live 3 times. One time was almost certainly an impersonator which people got angry about. I personally felt it was an innovative and funny move which played into the whole persona. He brought a lot of innovation to the genre.
RIP: I didn't know DOOM's fanbase crosses platforms in this way. I am thinking of creating a website just for dedicating a poolside.fm like website just for DOOM's music.
While speculation is mostly bad, I'm just seriously hoping it wasn't suicide. Given the fact he had his wife and another child I'd presume it's highly likely that it wasn't though.
I remember finding out about his kid dying a bit after it happened. Mainly because every few months I'd check in to see if there's any word on anything new coming out - things had come to a bit of a lull. Then around a year after his kids death, once again checking back in for anything new - I'd seen somebody say something along the lines of "His teen son fucking died man. For all we know, he could seriously want nothing to do with rapping anymore after such a big and shitty life event"
For whatever reason, that logic definitely struck a chord with me. Pretty much cut my expectations for new material and left me with being thankful for everything he'd made.
While I'd enjoy knowing the cause of death, I respect the privacy of his family more and understand it may never come out.
We've banned that troll account, but it's absolutely not ok for you to post like this. We've asked you several times to stop breaking the HN guidelines in comments here, and it looks like you've been continuing to do a ton of that. If you keep doing it we're going to ban you. Regardless of how shitty another comment is or how strongly you feel, it's not ok to make things worse like this.
> Just remember ALL CAPS when you spell the man name
https://youtu.be/noPlIn8TJSQ