Lecture: DOOM (Madrid 2011) / (100 mins interview)
Master underground MC and Supervillain, Daniel Dumile aka DOOM, sits down with Red Bull Music Academy at Matadero Madrid for this rare 1 hour, 40 minute interview and lecture. Priceless stuff. The conversation is in-depth, slightly awkward and clunky, interesting and insightful (kinda like DOOM himself); a treat if you’re a DOOM fanboy.
The couch is already mad caliente as I await an appearance by the day’s first guest lecturer – that masked man of mystery, MF Doom. Call me crazy, but sitting in front of a room full of people in relative silence waiting for something to start makes me a tad uncomfortable. The faintly audible strains of ASAP Rocky’s freshly leaked debut LP emanating from someone’s tinny laptop speakers is the only distraction. I don’t want my first impression of the most hyped rap release to hit the interwebz since Tha Carter IXVII-and-a-Half.0 to be tainted by such subpar sonic presentation, so, I make the executive decision to break the deafening near-quiet by dropping a bit of a vintage WHBI Zulu Beats broadcast over the lecture hall system. And as a sampled voice from one of Afrika Islam’s audio collages declares: “… and now brothers and sister, ladies and gentlemen, the man you’ve been waiting for…”
… who should show up at the hall’s back entrance right on cue, but the Super Villain himself. As unassumingly chill as a famous rapper-dude rocking a mask can be, Doom waves a greeting to the now-applauding assembled hordes, takes his place on the couch, and just like that we’re off and running our mouths. For an hour and a half our discussion covers such topics as the influence of said WHBI audio collages on Doom’s own similarly dense film and TV inspired album skits, the characters/personas of MF Doom vs. Viktor Vaughn vs. King Ghidra vs. Zev Love X, a certain Spanish instructional record and its role in KMD’s Mr. Hood, hangman games and Black Bastards album art controversy, his brother Sub Roc’s death, extended hiatuses and re-emergences, and the processes of making a slew of classic recordings (Madlib making beats in a bomb shelter amongst them). Arms shoot up rapid-fire when it’s Q&A time, and when all’s said and done this Super Villain sounds simply super-thankful that an audience is still here to appreciate him after all these years. A modest “Thanks for listening,” and familiar, concluding, “Follow your heart,” and he’s off to wherever masked men go to chill when it’s lunchtime.
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