I got the DOOM album a while back and noticed you were on it. How was that experience? What are your thoughts on DOOM, his career from KMD to now?
He asked me to be on his record and I of course, there’s no magic story. I just said yes because I’m a fan of him and all the weirdness that he represents. DOOM hit me up and I was like “hell Yeah, give me a fucking beat!” When I got it, I thought it was wild. He actually had to coach me through it a bit, and normally, no one has to coach me through a beat. ANT does my coaching and that’s even rare. When DOOM hit me with that beat I thought it was bananas when I heard it and it made me kinda nervous. And DOOM was like “in your head think of it like this and that”. But it didn’t reallyhelp, so I just ended up writing to the drums basically [laughs]. I wish I had more time because when I re-listen to it, I thought I could have done better, but oh well. He was happy with it, so I was happy to make DOOM happy.That’s my whole thing anyways—I don’t really give a fuck about being the best of all time. I just don’t want to disappoint people. That’s why I was such a good worker when I was blue-collar. I mean, I had dreams about stabbing my boss in the neck, but I always worked hard. It’s just something that’s in my work ethic I guess because I don’t like to be a disappointment to anybody.
So you’ve been a DOOM fan since the early days?
Look, a lot of people, especially white kids, champion the fuck out of 3rd Bass. I get it, I can see why; you finally get to see somebody that looks like you, doing the music you love, and that’s motivation. I understand that. 3rd Bass could rap better than the Beastie Boys at that time because the Beastie Boys were still doing their old-school style. 3rd Bass came out with more up-to-date styles and beats and everything. But to me, the best thing 3rd Bass ever did was introduce me to Zev Love X. No disrespect, but if I had to give 3rd Bass a VH1 hip-hop honor, it would be for introducing me to Zev Love X. Sorry Serch.Then DOOM’s story got even thicker as his homies passed away; the record never got released, and KMD went through all the turmoil. Then in the mid-90s, he comes back with Bobbito. And I hadn’t heard anything from Zev Love for years until someone told me he put out a 12-inch as MF DOOM. So I bought it and thought “this dude is buggin’!”
His new album is a monster. What do you think of his career thus far?
I’m just a fan of him and his ideas and what he does with them. People were on his dick so fucking hard, harder than most underground rappers you’ll ever see. And I mean, there are were cats that sold more records and were more popular, but people just jocked the fuck out of DOOM. The image, the icon, the personality, the mask—people loved it all. All this time, no one even really knew what he looked like! To me, that was genius how he made people eat up an image that wasn’t even him.I mean, I was a huge fan of the Mr. Hood record. I loved their singles because they had weird extra shit on them and the b-sides were fresh too. At the time Elektra was unstoppable—they had KMD, they had Brand Nubian, Leaders Of The New School. These groups were all fresh to me.
Click here to check out the full interview.
- Subroc, The Hip Hop Hendrix
