Blogging TBS: MF Doom

So, there are a lot of MCs who were influenced me during the period my memoir covers (roughly 1986-1992). Rakim, Chuck D, Kool G Rap and Big Daddy Kane basically constituted an ad hoc Introduction To The Principles Of Great Writing. Hip-Hop lyrics are a lot like other poetic forms, especially The Sonnet. The beat acts like a wall forcing the writer to contain his lyrics in such a way as to not violate the rhythm. At the same time, the writer must construct an appropriate rhyme-scheme and also say as much as possible. If you've never tried writing hip-hop lyrics I encourage an attempt. It is incredibly, incredibly difficult. When you see MCing done at a high level, it is truly incredible. I must have been, like, twelve when I first heard The Symphony, and when I finally got Big Dady Kane's verse, it occupied, probably, thirty percent of my brain for the next month. You have to hear it to truly get it, but I was just amazed at the word-play--"So I can let lyrics blast like a bullet\My mouth is a gun, on suckers, I pull it\The trigger. You figure, my pockets getting bigger\Cause when it comes to money, Yo Grant's my nigger."

But this isn't a post about what MCs influenced me at the time--more on that another time. This is about the MC who influenced me most at the time of writing. With all due respect to Ghostface (whose Pretty Tony Album left me reeling) I have to give that award to MF Doom. Let me just be grandiose and old and crotchety all at once--MF Doom is the last great MC.

Doom is not a natural for that accolade. He has a muddy voice, only dabbles in complicated rhyme schemes, and doesn't really have a great album to his credit (Operation Doomsday, maybe. I like Viktor Vaughn). But Doom has one of the most original aesthetics in recent memory. He combines the menace and gun-talk of a Mobb Deep, with arcana pulled from Star Trek: Voyager, Scooby Doo and, of course, Fantastic Four comic books. Then there is Doom's penchant for rhyming in the third person--a tactic that just amplifies the ridiculous nature of the battle rap genre. A great Doom rhyme is a sort of critique of hip-hop. Doom is a pro at constructing couplets from decidely non-hip-hop phraselogy and then throwing in some cartoonish language to either overstate, or understate, what's actually happening. I was talking to a buddy this weekend about Doom's line "They locked Lex Luthor up in Green Haven\Since then a nigger never really been too clean-shaven." Doom at once hyperbolizes himself (Lex Luthor) and then understates his own villany ("never really been too clean shaven.")

I'm leary of talking about this much more for fear of over-analyzing the guy. But when I was writing I wanted to do much of what Doom was doing. In fact, if I could change anything, I'd put the whole piece in the third person. Still, I think I was able to pull from my natural pallet of late 80s and early 90s cultural references and then employ the sort of language that seemed almost contrary to what I was actually saying. Anyway for peek into Doom's greatness, check out the two performances below. He's not a great stage guy, but if you listen to the MCing, it's just incredible. Favorite lines (From the quote at the top of the page )"He wears the mask just to cover the raw flesh\A rather ugly brother with flows that's gorgeous" and "Rhyme of the month, two pages long\Busting off the gauge with my cape on wrong\Son it's on, remind of a Raekwon tape song\With a fleet of Superbads as phat as Rae Dawn Chong." And yeah--he sampled "Spiderman and His Amazing Friends" and "Scooby Doo." Who couldn't love that?