MF DOOM Operation: Doomsday

The late Daniel Dumile was intimately familiar with reinvention and rebirth—concepts he explored through his alter ego, MF DOOM. The story goes like this: Dumile got his start as the bespectacled Zev Love X, a member of the boyish early-1990s Long Island rap trio KMD (Kausin’ Much Damage). But Dumile’s bandmate and brother, Subroc, died in 1993, and KMD were eventually dropped by their label—prompting Dumile to disappear from view altogether. When he returned in 1999, he had a new name—MF DOOM—and a remarkable debut album: Operation: Doomsday. Released right around the time the underground indie hip-hop scene was booming, Operation: Doomsday is high art done on a low budget. DOOM cuts together samples from a variety of sources—from a vintage Fantastic Four cartoon to the influential 1980s hip-hop movie Wild Style—and uses them to craft a fictitious backstory of triumph over adversity. It’s all part of his raw musical recipe, one that finds DOOM lifting drums from old-school hip-hop cuts, and pop melodies from the likes of The Beatles and Atlantic Starr. Lyrically, Operation: Doomsday is full of clever rhyme schemes and drunken wit, all of it sprinkled with gems of wisdom (example: “Only in America could you find a way to earn a healthy buck/And still keep your attitude on self-destruct”). At one point, he even rhymes from the perspective of a microphone (“The Mic”). Tempering braggadocio and street tales with geeky humour, Operation: Doomsday is a concept album about one man’s resurrection via art.