When was the last time you heard a song which initially sounded strange and even unbearable but then became beautifully peculiar and whimsical? The kind of track where you hear a mediocre voice talking about alcohol (no surprise there!) which then transitions into rapping?
A tune that started out weird but turned into something melodic with a great flow which might make you feel relaxed and even happy? The longer you listen to it, the more you’re drawn to it.
The artist in question is not mainstream but a face commonly found on the DR DOOM cereal: MF Doom.
Uncovering the mystique of Metal Face Doom
Some folks enjoy hip hop while others find it plain, bland, and generic. In fact, some have even gone as far as to describe hip hop as “not real music”, with just a bunch of boring rhymes accompanied by a boom bap beat.
Listening to MF Doom for the first time might make you feel strange – it can be strange music initially if you mostly listen to mainstream music although you’ll find that the this strangeness is blended seamlessly with classic yet unique boom bap beats. The more you listen to it, the more you realise that the wordplay can be very well-crafted and unique, along with the music and beat which, again, can be strange yet unique. The name, the voice, the music – everything might initially come off as plain strange!
What’s the “MF” in MF Doom?
Depending on the song you’re listening to, MF could either mean Metal Face or Metal Fingers. A Google search, for example, shows “metal face”, but if you listen to one of this albums, Special Herbs, you’ll find him referring to himself as Metal Fingers. The more you listen to the album, the more you discover that MF Doom happens to be a talented producer capable of making some incredibly fresh and unique music. No wonder there’s now an MF Doom silver ring to honour the artist.
It’s the surprising creativity and skill that MF Doom often demonstrates through unusual samples and nonsensical music. Even though many listeners call his lyrics as not being meaningful or lacking intricacy and nuance. On the contrary, they are anything but: the underlying messages are often found in this lack of meaning. The lack of meaning has, in fact, hidden meaning which is what most people miss!
Deciphering the message and demystifying the persona of MF Doom
Unless you fully listen to an artist/rapper/producer like MF Doom with complete attention to detail, you’d be quick to assume that the songs are just plain silly and confusing. But if they were, how come we now have an MF Doom handcrafted ring that says otherwise? It would take a lot to accomplish something like that, wouldn’t it?
If you’re a music listener with a ‘proper ear’, you might be able to understand the songs and the underlying messages behind MF Doom’s music a lot better. For example, the artist has written entire songs about how he’s a player. While most of his songs lack any real meaning or purpose, this blatant lack of meaning actually lays the foundation for an important message to be relayed:
While in the modern music world of today, rap is mostly focused on suffering and global issues, MF Doom’s songs about “nothing” goes against this traditional approach. Now, this could mean many things – such as, the importance of being unique. Another meaning could be the importance of focusing less on the negative aspects of life or the bad hand you were dealt, and just enjoying the good and positives in your life – living in the moment, so to speak, and taking life as it comes.
However, the main goal of most of MF Doom’s work is to know how to be unique and stand out – we believe that’s what he wants his audience to know – and DOOM does this in a number of ways which is, naturally, his cartoon character.
There’s a song called “One Beer” on one of his albums. The song talks about how he wants beer to go to waste and the sample is actually an instrumental which was made over 40 years ago! Yet, through some strange coincidence, the song immediately sparks interest. This is what the majority of MF Doom’s work encapsulates, using well-known samples that have gone down in music history as prized pieces of work, and then integrating them into his own songs. Somehow, he manages to pull it off every single time.
There’s another song called “All Caps”, which reminds the listener to spell MF DOOM using all caps only! The sheer creativity and uniqueness the artist holds is the reason that his album Madvillainy is the fifth rated album across the world. Now, that’s really something. After all, an artist can’t just have a silver ring one fine day modelled after him for nothing!
One of MF DOOM’s albums is called “MM..Food”. All the track names are names of foods and, again, the songs are very strange initially. Despite this strangeness and the songs seemingly having no end goals (to the casual listener), the artists takes samples from other artists, with many of those samples being outright old and absurd, and integrates them cleverly into his own music. That’s what truly sets him apart from other musicians and rappers, and that is the key to demystifying his mystique.
MF Doom’s ability to take samples from old music and transform them into modern hip hop songs is uncanny. All of the artist’s widespread creativity comes from this brilliant ability to take strange, old, and even absurd samples and then make them interesting with a hip hop twist. Hardly any artist on the market does this to good effect.
This level of creativity shines through not only in the artist’s DOOM cartoon character but also through his undeniable production skills and rapping skills. Another one of his signature traits is using cartoon dialogues at both the start and end of his songs.
Closing thoughts
What are your thoughts on MF Doom’s creativity and uniqueness? Fancy wearing an MF Doom handcrafted ring and jewellery that faithfully pays homage to one of the most creative and influential artists of our time?
Embrace the utterly cool strangeness!
The post MF Doom’s Mystique: Demystified first appeared on The Source.com.
The post MF Doom’s Mystique: Demystified appeared first on The Source.com.
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