MF DOOM Demystifies His Past in a Revealing Previously Unreleased 2003 Interview
Photo Credit: Mr. Mass for Okayplayer
The only MF DOOM interview you'll ever need to hear.
On the 100th episode of his The House List podcast, host Peter Agoston dug into his tape archive and (gently) restored what is arguably the single greatest MF DOOM interview ever conducted.
Running well over an hour, the previously unreleased 2003 discussion between DOOM and the veteran music journalist centers, or at least commences, with the 2004 return of Daniel Dumile as DOOM on Mm..Food (though he released two albums as Viktor Vaughn and one as King Geedorah between them.) In dissecting his approach to crafting the album (revealing that he'd begun conceptualizing the culinary rap classic while recording Operation: Doomsday,) DOOM traces various threads of production technique and wordplay to wildly specific moments in his hazier-than-thou hip-hop supervillain past.
The enigmatic producer draws on childhood memories of waking up in his mother's house, utilizing transitions he'd learned while DJing at parties in the park, as well as his first rhymes and hardware, in what is perhaps an unintentional demystifying of a tightly-stitched mythology through the cinematic fine points of a very New York upbringing. Throughout the first half of the interview, you can even hear his infant son, King Malachi Ezekiel Dumile -- who died tragically and quite mysteriously last year at just 14-years-old -- born just before the most prolific stretch of DOOM's output.
You can hear the full interview below. Scroll to the 12:00 mark to get right to it and subscribe to The House List podcast for more rare interviews from Peter Agoston's vault (including a chat with pre-Reasonable Doubt JAY-Z in the very first episode.)
