MF Doom

• 1. Introduction

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  MF Doom died on the 31st of October 2020, in a Leeds hospital, from an adverse reaction to blood pressure medication. His wife, Jasmine, was not permitted to visit until that same day, kept away by a COVID-19 lockdown. For two months, no one outside the family knew. Then, on December 31, Jasmine announced his death to the world.

  He was born Daniel Dumile on the 13th of July 1971, in Hounslow, London. He was raised in Long Beach, New York. He built one of the most celebrated catalogues in underground hip hop while wearing a metal mask. He operated under multiple names, sent imposters on stage in his place, and spent the final decade of his life barred from the country he had called home for most of his existence. Q-Tip, the rapper, called him "your favorite rapper's favorite rapper". El-P of Run the Jewels described him as a "writer's writer". After his death, Flying Lotus wrote of Madvillainy: "All u ever needed in hip-hop was this record."

  How did a British citizen who grew up in New York become the most enigmatic figure in underground rap? And how did a young man who lost everything in a single afternoon in April 1993 turn grief into a mask, and a mask into a legend?

• 2. Brothers and a Beginning

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  Dumile's father was Zimbabwean, his mother Trinidadian, and he arrived in the United States on a non-immigrant B visa as a small child, settling in Long Beach, New York. His household was shaped by Islam and the Five-Percent Nation, a black nationalist religious movement, and his father taught him about pan-African history through figures like Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad.

  As a boy, he collected comic books and earned the nickname "Doom" among friends and family, a phonetic play on his surname. He started DJing in third grade. By 1988, still a teenager, he had formed the hip-hop group KMD with his younger brother DJ Subroc and another member named Rodan, performing under the name Zev Love X.

  A&R representative Dante Ross learned of KMD through the group 3rd Bass and signed them to Elektra Records. Their recording debut came on 3rd Bass's track "The Gas Face", and in 1991 they released their debut album Mr. Hood. Dumile performed the last verse on "The Gas Face"; according to Pete Nice's verse on the song, Dumile created the phrase itself.

  By the early 1990s, Dumile and his KMD bandmates had moved away from Five-Percent belief toward the Ansaar Allah Community, later known as the Nuwaubian Nation. Their music carried religious messaging drawn from Nuwaubian tenets. Dumile still attended Nuwaubian events as late as 2000, including the Savior's Day celebration at the Tama-Re compound in Georgia.

  On the 23rd of April 1993, with the second KMD album, Black Bastards, nearly finished and a release date set for the 3rd of May 1994, DJ Subroc was struck by a car and killed while crossing the Long Island Expressway. He was 19 years old.

• 3. The Mask Is Born

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  After Subroc's death, Dumile retreated from hip hop entirely. He later described himself as living "damn near homeless, walking the streets of Manhattan, sleeping on benches" from 1994 to 1997, before settling in Atlanta. He described his years away as "recovering from his wounds" and preparing revenge against the industry that had dropped KMD and shelved Black Bastards over its controversial cover art, which depicted a stereotypical pickaninny character being hanged.

  In 1997 or 1998, he began appearing at open-mic events at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Manhattan, hiding his face by pulling tights over his head. That act of concealment became the seed of an entirely new persona. He built the character MF Doom from three sources: the Marvel Comics supervillain Doctor Doom, the G.I. Joe villain Destro, and the Phantom of the Opera. Like Doctor Doom and the Phantom, the character spoke of himself in the third person.

  Bobbito Garcia's Fondle 'Em Records released Operation: Doomsday in 1999. The cover depicted Doctor Doom rapping. The album sampled cartoons including Fantastic Four, a technique that became a recurring feature of his work. Jon Caramanica, reviewing it in Spin, noted that Doom's flow was "muddy, nowhere near the sprightly rhymes of KMD's early days". Caramanica later revisited the album in The New York Times in 2021, calling it "one of the most idiosyncratic hip-hop albums of the 1990s, and one of the defining documents of the independent hip-hop explosion of that decade".

  Academic Hershini Bhana Young argued that by adopting the Doctor Doom mask, Dumile was positioning himself as an enemy not only of the music industry but also of what Young called the "dominant constructions of identity that relegate him as a black man to second-class citizenship". The mask was never merely a gimmick. Later versions were modeled on a prop from the 2000 film Gladiator.

• 4. The Prolific Years

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  Dumile's most productive stretch ran roughly from 2002 to 2005, and it was disorienting in its range. He released albums under at least three separate pseudonyms in addition to MF Doom, each with its own invented lore.

  In 2003, he released Take Me to Your Leader under the King Geedorah moniker, a three-headed golden dragon space monster modeled after King Ghidorah of the Godzilla films. Pitchfork reviewer Mark Martelli described it as close to a concept album, one that laid out the "mythos" of King Geedorah. The publication Fact, in a brief notice for a 2013 reissue, called it "arguably the most cinematic" of his albums from that era.

  Also in 2003, he released Vaudeville Villain as Viktor Vaughn, a name derived from Doctor Doom's civilian identity, Victor von Doom. NME described the Viktor Vaughn persona as "a time travelling street hustler". Pitchfork named the album the week's best new album.

  The critical peak arrived with Madvillainy, recorded with producer Madlib over a series of sessions spanning two years, and released on the 23rd of March 2004. Madvillainy became widely regarded as his masterpiece. Later that same year came Mm..Food, released through Rhymesayers Entertainment, and VV:2, the Viktor Vaughn follow-up. Nathan Rabin wrote in The A.V. Club that after the commercial and critical success of Madvillainy, choosing to release VV:2 was an unusual move, one that sent Dumile "deeper underground" rather than toward wider recognition.

  The collaboration with DJ Danger Mouse as Danger Doom, The Mouse and the Mask, was released on the 11th of October 2005, by Epitaph and Lex Records, developed with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and featuring voice actors from its programs, particularly Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The album reached No. 41 on the Billboard 200. Around this time, Dumile also appeared in the Adult Swim animated series Perfect Hair Forever, voicing Sherman the giraffe, and contributed to the second Gorillaz album, Demon Days.

• 5. The Citizenship Trap

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  Dumile had entered the United States on a non-immigrant B visa in August 1971, when he was less than two months old. At age three, he was approved for permanent residency by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, but his family could not afford to file the paperwork. The status lapsed. He remained a British citizen his entire life.

  In 2004, having lived in the United States for decades, he applied for permanent residency under the immigration registry provision, believing he was eligible. His application, submitted with legal assistance and supporting evidence, was denied by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2005.

  In 2010, Dumile traveled internationally for a European tour. On the 5th of March 2010, Lex Records and the Sónar festival presented his first-ever London show, held at the Roundhouse in Camden. After the tour concluded, the United States Department of Homeland Security denied him re-entry, finding him "unlawfully present". He was forced back to England, separated from his wife and children for nearly two years.

  His family relocated to London in 2012. After the move, Dumile said he was "done with the United States". He subsequently lived in Yorkshire for several years, eventually residing in Leeds.

  The irony was not lost on anyone paying attention: the 2004 track "Coffin Nails" was selected for President Joe Biden's inauguration playlist in January 2021. Biden had been vice president in 2010, when Dumile was barred at the border. Fans noted the contradiction publicly.

• 6. The Final Chapter and Death

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  Dumile's last decade was spent mostly in collaboration. Key to the Kuffs, his album with producer Jneiro Jarel as JJ Doom, was released on the 20th of August 2012, with guest contributions from Damon Albarn, Beth Gibbons of Portishead, and Khujo Goodie of Goodie Mob. Critics noted its repeated references to Dumile's exile in the United Kingdom and its play on Britishisms.

  In late 2017, his son Malachi died from unspecified causes at the age of 14.

  Czarface Meets Metal Face arrived in March 2018. In early 2020, Dumile completed a second album with Czarface, Super What?, though its release was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic until May 2021.

  In January 2021, Stones Throw Records founder Peanut Butter Wolf revealed that Dumile had been working on Madvillainy 2 at the time of his death. Work had begun shortly after the original album's 2004 release, though Dumile recorded only a few times a year. He had estimated the album was "85% done" by the time he died. Wolf said he had permission from Dumile's family to release 11 songs Dumile had submitted in 2009. In April 2023, Madlib said he planned to finish Madvillainy 2.

  In October 2020, Dumile was admitted to St James's University Hospital in Leeds with respiratory problems. On October 31, he died from angioedema following an adverse reaction to blood pressure medication. His family criticized his treatment. Jasmine said the nurse call button was placed out of his reach and that hospital staff had failed to check on him regularly. Dumile's lawyers said it had taken two hours for hospital staff to address his swollen throat. An inquest by the Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust found that the care plan was not sufficiently detailed and that doctors were misled when Dumile's condition appeared to improve. Dr. Hamish McLure, the trust's chief medical officer, released a formal apology acknowledging the treatment had been substandard.

  The cause of death was not made public until July 2023. S.H. Fernando's biography, The Chronicles of Doom: Unraveling Rap's Masked Iconoclast, was released on the 29th of October 2024.