EWA100 - #87. MF Doom - Doomsday

87. MF Doom - Doomsday (Fondle 'Em. 1999. From the LP Operation: Doomsday)

Raven Mack: I remember first buying the "Dead Bent/Gas Drawls" single just because I'd buy anything that looked interesting at that point, because hip hop had yet to let me down so many times. The Scooby-Doo beat for "Hey" bugged me out and I played that shit forever. So when Operation Doomsday came out, I was all up on that joint. But I have to admit, there's a part of me that hates it in retrospect, not because MF Doom is not awesome or "Doomsday" is not a great song or anything, but just... I don't know... I think comic book nerd influence on anything has had a negative effect, except for, of course, with comic books. And the whole metal mask thing, it's very cool at first, but as time has gone on and it's been filtered through the obsessive compulsive disorder-oriented internet, it fills me with hatred for the whole genre it has created. Motherfuckers doing beats for cartoons and shit. I am filled with hate for this whole phenomenom, and since this will appear in simul-print format in zine form and on the intarwebs, I'm sure there'll be mad hate for this, or the standard complaint that I'm a washed-up old curmudgeon faggot for not jumping on the NEW hotness.
I guess what I get at is, I have a hard time disattaching talking about MF Doom on the robot machines from the robot souls (which are not evil-souled, but just lacking soul, or hopefully just misguided soul) that have attached this uber-hip-hop-hipster identity to the comic book term-paper rap.
That being said, I've got two of those special herbs and spices joints on vinyl, and I'm not attuned to the hipster aspects of things no more, I just happened to see it in a record store and saw all the songs were named after shit like mugwort, mullein, and rosemary, and my wife does mad herbal voodoo around the house and on my ills and aches.
It's the curse of hip hop though, when you come with the fresh shit, a thousand other motherfuckers with far less creativity or passion come along, take that freshness and make it stale to the point of painful.

Mike Dikk: I look at this spot as a place to commemorate Doom on his entire body of work, not just this one song. He has waaaaay too much shit out there to narrow it down to one great song. I mainly picked this one because it’s the first track on Operation: Doomsday and the lyrics: “"Ever since the womb' till I'm back where my brother went/That's what my tomb will say/Right above my government, Dumile (Doom will lay)/Either unmarked or engraved - hey, who's to say?". That’s still some of the cleverest shit he’s ever said.
Those lines kind of set the mood for the entire song. It’s optimistic and fun, yet still depressing, which a lot of rappers can’t pull off, but Doom does it so well that most people don’t even notice. He has the type of flow I could listen to for days without getting sick of it.
Lately, it seems a lot of people who found out about Doom early on kind of turned on him. Their reasoning is kind of ridiculous if you ask me. Not Raven’s, his reasoning is somewhat unique. Everyone else says he puts out too much shit, but the average lame mainstream rapper is doing 85 mixtapes a year now, and those usually have the same recycled beats over and over again. There’s only so many times you can hear “CANNON!” before you realize it’s just a dumb sounding vocal sample that gets more and more annoying every time another rapper uses it on his mixtape. Doom with his own beats (or Madlib’s) is 99% of the time golden. I will agree that his stuff with other producers isn’t as great, and stuff like that second Viktor Vaughn disc is downright awful.
That’s another thing about Doom. His production style is amazing, and yeah, some people are trying to do the same tricks these days, but no one else is going to flip some AM Gold sample like Doom and make it into a masterpiece. Dude has 10 volumes of his instrumental series and there’s hardly a weak beat to be found.
To sum up, stop hating on Doom just because he isn’t a well-kept internet secret anymore. He’s one of the few people that deserve any type of success he receives. His resume dates back to the late 80’s and holds up against anyone around right now. There’s plenty of douchebags on 106 and Park you can direct your ill will toward.

Download: MF Doom - Doomsday

No real video for this song, and the live clip isn't loading properly, so here's a 5 minute feature on Madvillain record shopping. I just wanted to work Madlib in somewhere on this list: