2004: MF DOOM, Madvillainy
By Dylan "CineMasai" Green
A week-and-a-half after MF DOOM passed away, I did what any hardcore fan would do: I took a mint-condition action figure out of its box. In 2016, Rappcats—the record store and label founded by California producer Madlib—released a second edition of the Madvillain action figure, initially a collaboration between Kidrobot and Stones Throw. As an extra incentive, the label also included a 7-inch vinyl of the then-unreleased single “Avalanche,” both packaged in a handsome box. I bought it so fast I hardly remembered clicking the “place order” button by the time the package arrived months later. For years, I couldn’t bring myself to open such a beautiful box, petrified by the usual collector’s fears of tainting a seal of freshness. But DOOM is dead now so “Fuck it,” I say to myself; “Where am I gonna put this guy?”
I freed the figure from his plastic clamshell coffin and immediately placed him and his cardboard collage on top of my dresser. It wasn’t much of a shrine, but it was a start. The figure, based on DOOM’s appearance in the animated video for “All Caps,” is designed to appear in motion; his right knee is bent while his left foot is arched, frozen mid-chase as any great Saturday morning cartoon villain would be. Combined with what amounts to a comic book splash page compressed into six sides, my diorama resembled a cold open for the best Adult Swim show never made. It summed up the cavalier ethos of DOOM and Madlib’s work on 2004’s Madvillainy, a rap masterpiece both meticulous and freewheeling.
Madvillainy also begins with a cold open, of sorts. After some chintzy retro scene-setting in the form of “The Illest Villains,” DOOM hits the ground running while already contemplating his end of days. “Living off borrowed time, the clock ticks faster / That’ll the hour they knock the slick blaster” is the terse opening line of “Accordion,” Madvillainy’s first proper song. Starting an album by declaring your highest peak of fame will come when you die is a chilling proclamation, but DOOM, as always, commits to the bit of the supervillain and continues to play the heel; he compares himself to soul singer Joe Tex and claims to get more cheese than Doritos, Cheetos, and Fritos put together. Over Madlib’s slinky accordion loop, DOOM concludes if death is a guarantee, then he might as well prove why he’s the best. “Accordion” thrusts listeners into a TV show already three or four seasons deep with only the barest possible context, yet it’s impossible to look away.
The genius of Madvillainy, as is the case with much of DOOM’s music, lies in its commitment to misdirection. He regularly mixed the trauma of his early life—losing his brother Dingilizwe “DJ Subroc” Dumile to a car accident at 19, living on the verge of houselessness and briefly retreating to Atlanta in the late 1990s—with the comic-book-inspired origin and references he adopted upon his return. Madvillainy brought this concept a step further by framing itself like a variety show, a mix of De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, the 1960s TV series The Marvel Super Heroes—which followed all five members of the Avengers in their own segments—and the non-sequitur energy found on stop-motion staple Robot Chicken. “Bistro” formally corrals the album into this shape by casting DOOM as the host, creating a walk through a funhouse led by “the best MC with no chain ya ever heard.”
Considering Madvillainy’s episodic format, I can’t gloss over the irony of having first heard chunks of it on a TV show. Like many, I was a big fan of The Boondocks when it first premiered on Adult Swim in 2005 but it wouldn’t be until the show’s 11th episode that Madvillainy would enter my ears. The episode, titled “Let’s Nab Oprah,” is centered around a plot to kidnap Oprah Winfrey from a Barnes & Noble perpetrated by 8-year-old Riley Freeman and his way-older-than-him friends Ed Wuncler III and Gin Rummy. The marquee fight of the episode revolves around Riley’s 10-year-old brother Huey and Oprah’s bodyguard Bushido Brown—a cross between Leroy Green from The Last Dragon and Afro Samurai—chipping each other to the tune of Madvillainy standout “All Caps.”
It’s one of three moments in the episode soundtracked by the album, my favorite of which being Ed and Rummy raiding a bookstore to the tune of the aptly titled “Raid.” Madlib’s frenetic piano sample matches the intensity of the moment and DOOM’s opening line provides a stark contrast: “How DOOM hold heat and preach nonviolence?” But 13-year-old me wasn’t dissecting the subtext: I was just rocking with the music. The album title and cover flashed across the screen during the episode’s end credits and from then on, my fate was sealed. Nearly two years after its initial release, I’d found my gateway to the sounds of DOOM.
In an article for Passion of The Weiss, Earl Sweatshirt was once quoted as saying DOOM circa 2004 did for millennials what Wu-Tang did for Generation X. If that’s the case, Madvillainy is certainly my 36 Chambers. Madvillainy bears many of the hallmarks of DOOM’s style: his retro-fetishism, his off-kilter musical ear, his word-drunk yet deceptively nimble rhyme schemes. Like most of the greatest rappers of all time—Ghostface Killah, Young Thug, Jean Grae—he relishes the sounds of words as much as their meaning. Songs like “Figaro” and “Meat Grinder” are phonetically pleasing and feature lines twisting references to tertiary Star Trek and G.I. Joe characters into boasts and brags accented by Madlib’s ear for the psychedelic. Like 36 Chambers, Madvillainy is dense yet approachable, a feat of incredible skill hidden beneath New York twang and dust-covered LP jackets for those willing to meet its creators at the Nexus of All Realms.
In retrospect, Madvillainy’s madcap construction marks it as DOOM’s most accessible album since Operation: Doomsday. The variety show concept is loose, nothing more than a framing device for one-off ideas and guest spots. Song topics range from dressing down the military industrial complex (“Strange Ways”) to attempting to give a date a breath mint (“Operation: Lifesaver”) to the art and politics of the best rolled L’s (“America’s Most Blunted”). Instrumental interludes act as commercial breaks between songs. A handful of guests, including Madlib as the helium-voiced Quasimoto and singer Stacy Epps, dot the album with other voices. The wildest guest spot isn’t even from a guest, at least not technically. “Fancy Clown” is a diss track aimed at DOOM and a cheating lover but “performed” by Viktor Vaughn, one of DOOM’s many other aliases. Other rappers have dedicated entire albums to warring with their own created personae; for DOOM, it’s just another footnote, a caustic pass at a pop song before the next idea takes over.
Madvillainy opened my eyes to the outer limits of the spoken word. Dramatic, I know, but it truly broadened my perspective and laid the groundwork for the boom-bap rabbit hole I would fall into as I began high school. DOOM was the shepherd who led me to the backlogues of hip-hop history and provided a baseline for my fascination with everything weird in rap music.
But I’ve already written that piece, which you can read here. Looking back on those days, it would be easy to let a part of the wonder that fuels my love of rap die with DOOM. I refuse. Relistening to Madvillainy in the wake of DOOM’s death doesn’t fill me with nostalgia for what was; it renews my interest in what could be.
The album’s influence lives on in every corner of rap. A DOOM reference on Playboi Carti’s long-delayed third album Whole Lotta Red set the internet ablaze when it debuted this past December. An old clip of Tyler, The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt meeting DOOM while touring Europe in the early 2010s—and losing their minds while watching “All Caps” and “Curls” performed live—quickly went viral after his passing. Tributes have run the gamut from freestyles and mixes to graffiti and sculptures, many of which have revolved around Madvillain. To drive the point home, Madvillainy also remains the only DOOM project to re-enter the Billboard 200 chart following his death.
There’s no corner of hip-hop that DOOM’s death didn’t touch and for rap fans of a certain age, the unbridled variety of Madvillainy was our point of first contact. It’s bleak and hilarious, insular and universal, as perfect a blend of rapper and producer ever committed to record. It’s powered by retro whimsy and grit yet still feels timeless. It’s the album I’ll be thinking of every time I look at the figure on my dresser, hunched over a diorama etched out in all caps.
Dylan "CineMasai" Green is a rap journalist and cultural critic who loves a good concert and a good adlib. His work has been published in Pitchfork, BET, Audiomack, DJBooth, Okayplayer, Pigeons & Planes, and the dusty tombs of Facebook notes.