I think one of my biggest gripes with modern hip-hop (and specifically a lot of these young Soundcloud artists) is that it feels like a lot of them are just trying to be the hottest thing. There’s no style, no substance, just repeated lyrics that are almost more about matching a flow than saying anything worth hearing. That probably makes me sound like an old fart, and if you look at my 2022 AOTY list you’ll notice plenty of hip-hop albums on it, but what draws me to it as a genre isn’t just the artists creating bangers, but the ones with a distinct style, solid flows, and yes, strong beats. I say all this because, if you talk to anyone who’s been listening to hip-hop for a good chunk of time, chances are good that at some point MF Doom will enter the conversation. And there’s good reason for it.
Lyrically, MF Doom was one of the greatest in the game, one of the kings of the double entendre, a poet whose lines will only hit you hours later. This, coupled with his buttery-smooth cadence, results in a style that is almost conversational, conjuring an image of a man sitting in an armchair with a snifter of scotch in one hand and a cigar (or joint) in the other, waxing poetic about whatever random musings went floating past. He very much portrays the image of a villain revealing his evil scheme two minutes too late to stop it, and the result is an album that feels like a victory lap, even if on its release Doom was still very much an underground artist.
I would be remiss if I didn’t take some time to mention the other half of the pair that is “Madvillain”. If Doom is the super villain standing on the top of his latest, terrifying robot, Madlib is the mad scientist in the lab, constructing the blueprints to create devastating after devastating weapon. The credits on this thing are absolutely astounding, and each beat is truly a testament to Madlib’s music literacy. The album is full of old funk, R&B, and disco cuts, and at some point I’ll have to go back through the credits to listen to the original source material. There’s a little bit of something for every hip-hop listener. Songs like “Money Folder” and “All Caps” are your typical hip-hop bangers, whereas instant classic “Accordion” and “Strange Ways” are pretty strange and make you wonder just how someone could find the pulse and construct such tight flows over the beats. Turning back to a comment I made earlier, you don’t find artists like this much anymore. In a world where each beat can be manufactured in a computer, there seems to be some soul missing that artists like Madlib and MF Doom brought to this album. It’s because of these little touches and, quite bluntly, this musical intelligence that this album feels like a classic, even though it’s less than twenty years old. Every listen brings a new discovery.
I think it’s because of this quality that I’m not fully in on the album. There’s a lot to love with it, but also a lot that I am still discovering. There are a lot of songs that I instantly love, and others that I find myself skipping over to find the stronger cuts. If you ask me in a year what my rating is, there’s a good chance that it might very well be higher. But right now, given what I’ve caught, what I’ve appreciated, and what I’m hungry to dig into more, I find myself giving it the rating that I do. Still, there’s no denying that this is one of the most innovative, unique, and villainous hip-hop records to ever grace the musical landscape.
My Rating: 4.5/5
The Word and The Song 