The cover of Madvillainy, is a photo of DOOM in his mask. If a stranger catches him bare-faced, he’ll pull his shirt up over his head, or grab a notebook to hide behind. He takes the mask very seriously only a select inner circle speaks to DOOM without the mask. If you can locate MF DOOM, his tendency toward privacy makes him hard to work with. By the time DOOM and Madlib joined forces as Madvillain, each artist had his own collection of alter egos and secret identities, further obfuscating themselves from the exposing glow of the spotlight. He began working on a jazz-based project in which he assumed multiple alter egos the collection of pseudonyms and characters came to be known as Yesterday’s Universe.
But just when Madlib’s career seemed poised to blow up, he pulled away. His 2000 album, The Unseen, used funked-up voice modulation to create the character of Quasimoto. At Stone’s Throw, Madlib began making a name for himself as an uncommon and prolific producer. After doing production work for a few artists in the mid ’90s, Madlib’s new group Lootpack was signed to to a deal by Peanut Butter Wolf and his Stone’s Throw Records in 1998. From those bins, Madlib began stitching together hip-hop beats as part of a collective he called the Crate Diggas Palace. Turn-of-the-century hip-hop would not have survived without hands like Madlib’s - eager to pick through catalogue after catalogue of dusty and forgotten vinyl. became Madlib through the venerable tradition of crate-digging. Madlib’s origin story is less murky, though he still shares DOOM’s affinity for anonymity. The super-villain, who sometimes sends impostors to perform in his stead, might not have existed if his brother had successfully crossed the Long Island Expressway in 1993. In later interviews he would claim that he spent the time living semi-homeless in New York, “recovering from his wounds,” and preparing revenge on the industry that “so badly deformed him.” In 1997 he reemerged, sporting a new identity and that foreboding mask. The artist soon to be known as DOOM disappeared from the hip-hop scene in ’94. Then, Elektra dropped KMD, and the ladder to stardom was knocked over while Daniel Dumile was still clinging to the first rung. Elektra Records signed KMD, but before they could glimpse the release of an actual album, DJ Subroc was hit by a car and killed. In the late ’80s Daniel Dumile (pronounced doom-ih-lay) was rapping under the name Zev Love X in a group called KMD with his brother DJ Subroc - the chrome mask that would later turn Dumile to DOOM was nowhere to be found. MF DOOM’s origin story is shadowy and unclear by design. Madvillainy was, and still is, a reminder of the dirt and grit that’s an integral part of the makeup of hip-hop. Artists like El-P, Little Brother, Deltron3030, and Cannibal Ox were making music more accustomed to the dark spaces of the underground, where the primordial ooze of hip-hop catalyzes artists that are either too unpolished for bright lights, or have no interest in them whatsoever. Ten years later we find Macklemore collecting rap awards at the Grammys. Madvillain, though, belongs to the other category of early-aughts hip-hop artists: those that actively avoided the influence of pop. Another 2004 release, Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, even grafted one of rap’s biggest artists ever onto one of the greatest pop groups of all time.
Prominent 2004 releases like Twista’s Kamikaze, Talib Kweli’s The Beautiful Struggle, and Kanye West’s College Dropout, were crafted largely around soul samples just like those on Madvillainy, but Kanye’s pop-sensible fingerprint pushed those albums toward the mainstream. There were the artists that fully embraced the integration of hip-hop into pop culture. The seminal collaboration between two of underground hip-hop’s most respected members came about at a time when hip-hop was, in many ways, split between two camps. The cutting edge of the genre has been found under rocks, in dark corners - something that’s never more true than when you speak of the woozy beats and lexical gymnastics of MF DOOM and Madlib’s Madvillainy. Born in unofficial dance parties spread only by word of mouth, hip-hop’s beginnings are rooted away from the mainstream. The underground has always been hip-hop’s lifeblood.
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