MF Doom

Hiding himself behind a silver gladiator-style mask, MF Doom is an enigmatic super villain character created by rapper-producer Daniel Dumile (January 9, 1971) as the protagonist of his groundbreaking brand of alternative underground hip-hop. Born in London but raised in New York by a Trinidadian mother and Zimbabwean father, he first heard primitive forms of rap, sampling and scratching on local pirate radio stations in the 1980s and started making music with his older brother DJ Sub-Roc. They formed KMD (Kausing Much Damage) and with Dumile performing under the name Zev Love X, they mixed together street culture with racial and religious social rhymes and DIY audio collages that included clips from Sesame Street and language learning tapes. They were unique and influential and had a cult following but Elektra Records refused to release their controversial second album Black Bastards in 1993 and one of the members, Sub-Roc, was hit by a car and died soon after. Dumile disappeared from the music industry and was thought to be living on the streets, but re-emerged with spots at open-mic nights in Manhattan and returned with his new mask and persona on landmark debut album Operation: Doomsday in 1999. Partly inspired by the Marvel Comics villain Dr. Doom, Dumile shunned personal attention but his rapping vigilante character MF Doom became a cult figure on the New York underground scene and early albums Mm.. Food in 2004 and Live from Planet X in 2005 were filled with sci-fi references, retro beats and dystopian inner-city stories. He also created the characters of King Geedorah and Viktor Vaughn and collaborated with Danger Mouse on the album The Mouse and the Mask (2005) and Madlib on the epic Madvillainy (2004) before reaching his darkest and most aggressively potent point on 2009's Born Like This, which featured spots from Raekwon and Ghostface Killah plus samples of rockbeat poet Charles Bukowski. With his trademark husky, raspy delivery and smart, jazzy flows he went on to establish himself as one of hip-hop's most inventive artists and further explored his comic book fantasies on albums Keys to the Kuff with Jneiro Jarel in 2012 and NehruvianDOOM with Bishop Nehru in 2014. In the following years, Dumile’s appearances were very few and far between, including a guest spot on The Avalanches’ single “Frankie Sinatra” (2016) and a collaborative album with American hip-hop collective Czarface titled Czarface Meets Metal Face in 2018 before his sudden passing in October 2020 at the age of 49.