Born Like This

Daniel Dumile, aka DOOM, is one of hip-hop’s most interesting figures, yet simultaneously one of the most enigmatic. In fact, even to talk about Daniel Dumile as a musical persona is somewhat pointless. After some success in the early nineties under the alias Zev Love X with legendary rap group KMD, Dumile disappeared after his brother, DJ Subroc, was killed in a car accident. Allegedly spending some years homeless and destitute, he reappeared in Atlanta around 1998, calling himself MF Doom and covering his face with a mask. Aligning himself with Marvel-style comic super-villains, MF Doom, or DOOM as he has now chosen to be called, is essentially a character, a fusion of fact and fantasy. Daniel Dumile thus no longer exists as a public figure, conducting his rare interviews and making public appearances wearing the mask and playing the role of the ‘villain’ it represents.

In this sorry world, dominated by the egos of all the Kanye Wests and Lil Waynes, DOOM’s rejection of celebrity culture and any attempts to construct a ‘real’ public persona is more than refreshing; it is masterful. This is largely down to the consistently excellent music which has always supported it, a trend which continues with Born Like This. Husky lyrical wanderings are layered over beats which range from the slightly quirky to the downright odd. As usual there are no choruses or hooks; verses begin and end randomly amongst comic-book skits, some of which are sampled and some of which are contrived. The lyrics defy analysis due to DOOM’s abstract style, filled with wordplay and making use of strange rhymes and metaphors. Rather than sticking to conventional narrative forms, verbal ‘images’ are created by repeated dips into similar semantic fields, and the impression of DOOM being a character is heightened by the fact that he only ever refers to himself in the third person.

‘Cellz’ can be considered the album’s centrepiece, opening with 2 minutes of the poet Charles Bukowski reading from his apocalyptic prophecy, Dinosauria, We, accompanied by offbeat drums and the sound of explosions. Raekwon makes a sterling appearance on ‘Yessir!’, one of many examples on the album of DOOM’s position as one of the world’s most innovative and creative hip-hop producers. However, guest productions still feature, most notably in the form of beats from Madlib and the late J-Dilla. The latter’s eerie creation for the track ‘Lightworks’ is distinctly leftfield, differing greatly to a lot of the output which made him one of hip-hop’s most venerated figures. His genius is still apparent though, and the track is, for me, perhaps the best on the album.

DOOM is an underground legend, and with good reason. Born Like This is not a massive stylistic leap from previous albums (excluding the Madvillain and Dangerdoom producer collaborations), but relative to the majority of the popular hip-hop industry it is light-years ahead. Buy this, and buy anything else that DOOM has had anything to do with.