Daniel Dumile, the reclusive musician who acted as the masked villain MF Doom, died on October 31 at the age of 49, although the news was not revealed until New Year’s Eve. Dumile spent more than two decades as one of the best-known and most loved artists of underground hip-hop, a rapper known for his unexpected word choices and complex stacks of rhymes.
However, Dumile’s impact went far beyond his formidable microphone skills. Hiding his face behind a metal mask in public appearances – appearing to them – he separated his words from his person, something rare in a genre steeped in self-aggrandizement and diary writing. His loyalty to independent labels like Stones Throw, Rhymesayers, Lex, Nature Sounds and Epitaph paved the way through the established machinery of the music industry. His beat creation was idiosyncratic, sampling ’80s silent storm records instead of’ 70s hard funk, and he played the MPC sampler in a way that revealed the seams. “Madvillainy”, his innovative collaboration in 2004 with producer Madlib as Madvillain, avoided traditional songcraft for a whirlwind of psychedelic and dreamlike ideas.
Its influence is apparent in the production of musicians who have worked together in the past two decades – rappers, singers and producers inside and outside the world of hip-hop. Here are 11 examples of how Doom’s aesthetic choices have infiltrated the artistic impulses of several generations.
Aesop Rock, ‘Flashflood’ (2001)
With three 12-inch singles released on Fondle ‘Em Records by radio personality Bobbito Garcia in the late 90s, MF Doom was part of an initial wave of underground hip-hop musicians, purists focused on beats and rhymes recording on the independent record labels between 1997 and 2004. At the time, Dumile was already a victim of a major label. Acting as Zev Love X in the KMD group of the early 90s, he was pulled from Elektra amid controversy over the trio’s incendiary album art. Reinventing himself as MF Doom, his first songs helped to show that there was a sustainable path outside the system. Rapper Aesop Rock grew up with KMD and his music navigates similarly through labyrinthine patterns, pop culture debris and SAT vocabulary words. He became one of the signature artists of two record labels who were the standard bearers of mid-2000s underground rap, El-P’s Definitive Jux and Atmosphere’s Rhymesayers. In a verse about a recent MF Doom tribute, Aesop claims to have sold his 1999 demo outside a Doom show at the closed Brownie’s club in East Village.
Ghostface Killah featuring Wu-Tang Clan, ‘9 Milli Bros.’ (2006)
At a time when the lines between underground and mainstream hip-hop were much denser, it was unheard of for a platinum Def Jam artist like Ghostface Killah of the Wu-Tang Clan to grasp the bold, underground, lo-fi noise of beatmakers like MF Doom and J Dilla. Apart from a few beats from Doom’s 10-volume “Special Herbs” series for his fifth album, “Fishscale”, Ghostface not only amplified Doom’s unbalanced rhythmic genius, but gained a critical reassessment in the process. “He’s a great artist,” Ghostface told Mass Appeal in 2005. “He’s like me in a way, very creative.”
Thom Yorke, ‘Black Swan’ (2006)
“Ultimately, for me, it’s not rap, it’s poetry,” Thom Yorke of Radiohead told Dazed about his favorite rapper. “The way he freely forms his verses and puts it all together, I don’t think anyone else does it that way.” In 2007, between the release of his acclaimed, amorphous and beatwise solo debut “The Eraser”, and Radiohead’s acclaimed, amorphous and beatwise seventh album, “In Rainbows”, Yorke abandoned a playlist of the moment’s 10 favorite songs . Two of them had Doom rhymes.
Danny Brown, ‘Adderall Admiral’ (2011)
“I never knew you could make an entire album without hooks and it sounded so good,” Danny Brown told Complex about one of his favorite LPs, “Madvillainy”. “This album showed me that music has no rules. Before I thought you needed 16 bars and hooks to make a good song. Brown has emerged as one of the most successful underground rappers of the past 10 years, thanks to his uncompromising vision. His discovery, “XXX” of 2011, brought songs and spiral fragments to life like “Adderall Admiral”, a 103-second song built on an especially loud sample of post-punk band This Heat.
The Weeknd, ‘Loft Music’ (2012)
The leader of the Super Bowl halftime chart and superstar, Weeknd, is an avowed fan of MF Doom, posting about him on Instagram and recently paying tribute to some songs on his Apple Music radio show. Although Weeknd does a more hedonistic and retro-flavored R&B, it is hard not to imagine that the born artist Abel Tesfaye did not learn some lessons on mystic building from the metal-faced rapper. Tesfaye originally appeared after posting songs like “Loft Music” in 2010 with complete anonymity. He recently started performing with his face covered with bandages and prostheses.
Earl Sweatshirt, ‘Chum’ (2013)
When the then-teen rapper Earl Sweatshirt became a viral hit in 2010, his lyrics were absolutely filled with delusional assonances and crazy images: “Twisted, sicker than crazy cattle, I’m actually out of six different drinks with a Prince wig in a cast . It is no surprise that he studied Doom, helping to build a small rap empire with the collective Odd Future. Songs like “Chum” not only spiral with Doom’s elaborate word composition, but also with his confused and dizzy mood. “I based many of the ways that I was trying to rap your [expletive] when I was learning to do this, ”Earl told guerrilla interviewer Nardwuar in 2014.
Jinsang, ‘Affection’ (2016)
A small industry of chillhop artists has produced distant and uncomplicated atmospheric beats, best known for the Internet’s popularity of “lofi hip-hop radio – beats to relax / study”. Although the sub-genre “hip-hop lo-fi” is inspired mainly by Detroit’s innovative sample, J Dilla, and Japanese Nujabes, it also owes Dumile’s series of instrumentals “Special Herbs” recorded as Metal Fingers. As a producer, he used to paint with nostalgic and dreamlike tools, borrowing from R&B of the silent storm, jazz-funk, soft rock and Sade. Although Californian beatmaker Jinsang is relatively unknown, this song has more than 61 million streams on Spotify,
Open Mike Eagle, ‘No Selling (Uncle Butch Pretending It Don’t Hurt)’ (2017)
Los Angeles rapper Open Mike Eagle loved Doom’s ability to find success by doing the things he loved most about rap: “the freedom to sample and rhyme over any loop that attracts him,” Eagle told Vice. “To stay motivated to go as crazy as possible with the wordplay.” Eagle is known for his complicated jokes – he briefly had a Comedy Central show where Doom rapped in Episode 2. And like Doom, Eagle is not afraid to deal with big concepts or get out of himself. In his critically acclaimed LP “Brick Body Kids Still Daydream”, he raps truths and fictions about Chicago’s notoriously poorly managed housing project, Robert Taylor Homes.
Your Old Droog, ‘Grandma Hips’ (2017)
Perhaps no modern rapper embodies the Doom trend for buggy references and architectural rhyme schemes better than Your Old Droog, from Brooklyn, a man who once boasted: “While I was making sure every bar is tough / You herbal was playing Pokémon, chasing Charizard When his career started, Droog took Doom’s seclusion seriously, leading to an internet conspiracy theory that he was actually Nas in disguise. “I don’t want to walk around like a rapper all the time,” he told Spin of his initial decision to remain anonymous. “I learned this from my favorite rapper, MF Doom – how he approached it, doing interviews. People get attached to these characters and start to believe that they are them.
KeiyaA, ‘Way Eye’ (2020)
“DOOM was my favorite MC and producer,” Chicago-based author KeiyaA avant-R & B posted on Twitter, adding that he “really showed me a new way to get emotional, how to be honest in my expressions, how to build worlds”. His debut, “Forever, Ya Girl!”, Has some of Doom’s homemade courage in its lo-fi textures and sample shelving.
Westside Gunn with Conway the Machine and Benny the Butcher, ‘George Bondo’ (2020)
Contemporary underground rap is exploding with rhymes that work on the same Doom model around “Madvillainy”: highly technical noises, often delivered with effortless cool. Two of his colleagues in the late 90s – Roc Marciano and Ka – restarted about a decade ago, and there was no shortage of precision experts like ice in their wake. The most popular at the moment is the Buffalo Griselda collective, which includes Conway the Machine, Benny the Butcher and Westside Gunn, who collaborated with Doom on a 12-inch two-song song in 2017. In “George Bondo,” Benny the Butcher sang, “I think it’s a game until I, Patrick Kane, somebody homie / This is sliding with a bat, hitting one by the goalkeeper. “