![]() It was far from his first experience of great loss. “Thank you for allowing us to be your parents” he said. In 2017, Dumile emerged on Instagram to share news – if not details – of the passing of his 14-year-old son King Malachi Ezekiel Dumile. How much of this was showmanship, and how much was creating a shield behind which to hide? Every supervillain needs an origin story, and DOOM’s life encountered more tragedy than a human should endure. So why not do something like throw a mask on?” But if there’s going to be a first impression, I might as well use it to control the story. A visual always brings a first impression. “Like girls being like, ‘Oh, he’s sexy,’ or ‘I don’t want him – he’s ugly’, and then other dudes sizing you up. “I wanted to get onstage and orate, without people thinking about the normal things people think about,” he once said of the mask – formally styled like the aforementioned Doctor Doom, later modelled on that worn by Russell Crowe in 2000’s Gladiator. It sounds trite to say, yet too poignant not to: in a year where the selfish and the ignorant resisted the wearing of masks, MF DOOM never had a problem with it. The masked figure who actually appeared on stage? Comedian Hannibal Buress. Last November, when Flying Lotus performed at the Adult Swim Festival in LA, the DJ announced that he would be joined onstage by DOOM. “Whoever plays the character, plays the character…” “I’m the director,” he told The New Yorker in 2009. Sometimes he’d give his mask to a member of his crew and go watch his own show, anonymous, in the crowd. DOOM often sent friends out onstage under his mask to lip-sync to his rhymes. I like to design my stuff, and I consider myself an author.” A shrouded face leant itself to mirth. “I’m more like a writer dude rather than a freestyler,” he told The Chicago Tribute in 2004. His work on these projects was as director. But he also had Zev Love X (his persona in his first group, KMD, with younger brother DJ Subroc) and the aliases King Geedorah, Viktor Vaughn and Madvillain. “Off pride, tykes, talk wide through scar-meat / Off sides, like how Worf ride with Star-Fleet” went ‘Figaro’ from 2004’s ‘Madvillany’. These were messy canvases strewn with concepts pilfered from pop culture – especially the geekier end. His records were melting pots of crate raiding kitsch – samples from Scooby-Doo cartoons, horror movies, Godzilla films. ![]() And yet genius doesn’t come from merely ticking boxes. His run of four classic albums in two years (2003’s ‘Take Me To Your Leader’ and ‘Vaudeville Villain’ and 2004’s ‘Venomous Villain’ and ‘Mm…Food’) is one of rap’s greatest achievements. Few who have picked up a microphone have had the confidence of flow or the flair for wordplay that Dumile exhibited. Even within such an onslaught, like the kick to the gut that punctuates the end of a mugging, the death of the rap genius hurt like a deep, uncauterised wound.įlawless technique was a given, his voice – smoky, from the recesses of the throat, inherently cool – as unique as any of the greats to come before or after. This most wretched run of 12 months – one where illness and suffering reigned supreme – had taken many lives up to this point household names, millions more anonymous, lost to a virus that ran roughshod. After a year that took so much, finally came Doomsday. ![]() 49 is no age to go, but he leaves behind a cosmos of creativity.ĭumile’s demise, announced on Instagram yesterday by his wife Jasmine, felt like 2020’s final insult. Dumile may no longer walk the Earth, but it’s unfeasible that his art and his ideas will ever leave it. ![]() Born Daniel Dumile on January 9th in London, 1971, later of Long Island, New York, masked rapper MF DOOM styled his hip-hop persona on Marvel Comics’ big bad Doctor Victor Von Doom. Never has the passing of a supervillain elicited more sorrow.
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