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 mf doom interview
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Life behind the mask. By anybody’s standards, underground hip-hop veteran MF Doom – aka King Geedorah, Zev Love X, Viktor Vaughan or just plain Daniel Dumile – is on one hell of a roll right now. His 2004 collaboration with producer Madlib (Madvillainy, released under the Madvillain banner) brought him widespread critical acclaim, while the recent solo album, Mm.. Food, cemented his rep as an eccentric lyricist and beat-maker extraordinaire. Now his new long-player, The Mouse And The Mask, looks set to consolidate his position as everybody’s favourite spaced-out b-boy. Produced by Gorillaz associate, Danger Mouse, and released under the shared nom de plume Dangerdoom, it’s perhaps the most accessible work yet to emerge from Doom’s 15-year career, while still retaining that uniquely lop-sided worldview that makes his music so woozily immersive.  “Danger had heard some of the stuff I was doing,” recalls Doom down a crackling phoneline from his New York home, “and he wanted me to get on a record he was doing for [De La Soul/Gravediggaz legend] Prince Paul. He did a lot of things on there that caught my ear, y’know?” Finding themselves clicking creatively, the pair vowed to harness their studio chemistry to fashion an album. “I’m a producer myself,” says Doom. “So when somebody does beats differently to the way I’d do them it really brings something fresh out in me creatively.” Both longtime animation fans, Doom and Danger Mouse managed to enlist voice actors from cult channel Cartoon Network to help create the genuinely funny skits that pepper The Mask And The Mouse. “Oh man,” enthuses Doom, “as soon as Cartoon Network came on air, it was my favourite channel. A lot of the voices on the album come from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, this show about three characters: Milkshake, French Fries and Meatball. It’s really retarded – I love it, man. I was totally honoured to work with those guys.”  Doom has long thrived on collaborative work, having MC-ed with and produced beats for everyone from Gorillaz to Ghostface. “To me it’s like when you had jazz collaborations back in the day,” he says. “Like when you had jazz cats coming together as quartets and recording albums, knowwhatImean? It’s just like that in my eyes. I like to mix it up.” Doom’s incredible work rate – counting his Special Herbs series of bootleg remixes and instrumentals, he’s currently averaging around five or six albums a year – may perhaps be due in part to this restless, eager-to-experiment approach. “Sometimes it seems like I’m not even doing enough work,” he says, forlornly. “Right now I’m trying to find ways that I could be doing more. That’s just the creativity level that’s hittin’ me right now.” So what can we expect next from the Doom factory? “There’s this cat John Robinson who’s got an album coming out on my label; there’s the next Madvillian album; there’s a new King Geedorah joint; there’s my joint album with Ghostface; and, y’know, Viktor’s running around here somewhere…”  But with the mainstream infatuated with the gun-toting antics of Fiddy Cent et al, does wigged-out workaholic Doom ever feel like an outsider in a genre that, if there were any justice, ought to have made him filthy rich? “Naah, not at all,” he laughs. “The way I do it is the way we always been doing it. All this sugar-pop, honey-coated, fake-gangsta hip-hop – that’s the thing that’s ‘new’. It feels like nowadays, to even get on the mic you have to have killed, like, four people, and that’s absurd. But real, hardcore hip-hop? That’s what I represent. And it’ll never go away – it’s just rare now…”
Joe Madden
Dangerdoom – The Mouse And The Mask, released 17 October 05 on Lex.
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see also
 mf doomalbum review  madvillainalbum review  albums of 2004madvillainy  king geedorahalbum review  danger mousefeature  dm & jeminialbum review  gorillazalbum review  lex recordslabel profile
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