MM..FOOD (20th Anniversary Edition)

But “One Beer” is warm, bleary, and entirely engrossing; it also underlines—unsurprisingly given its title—the way DOOM’s style refracts through different illicit substances. In an interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books, Open Mike Eagle characterized his favorite rapper’s early style in a particularly incisive way. In discussing how DOOM became increasingly regimented over the course of his career—the skittering flows from Doomsday, which frequently spilled over the ends of measures, being corralled, by the time of Madvillainy and MM..FOOD, and stuffed deep into the pockets of beats—Eagle said: “I feel like the MF DOOM on Doomsday is like, drunk, trying to survive [...] he’s recording like he’s not going to live much longer. There’s an embrace of the raw that’s both aesthetic and alcoholic—specifically alcoholic.”

While it can be difficult to know what, in Daniel Dumile’s life, was and was not performance, profiles of DOOM from the 2000s make the heavy drinking seem, indeed, like a plague on his real life. On “One Beer,” Madlib’s beat flits between mischief and soft tragedy, and DOOM’s first line on the song (“There’s only one beer left…”) sounds oddly, ominously despairing. Madvillain, while also evincing an “embrace of the raw,” is unmistakably a record about and informed by weed. This is grimmer, more solitary; for all the cartoon supervillain posturing, FOOD more frequently feels like a missive from someone hoping to pull us down into the muck with him. Even when the past is recalled fondly, liquor looms: later on the LP, DOOM will reminisce about the days he drank Hennessy straight because he couldn’t afford sodas to chase it.

But by FOOD, that alcoholic sloppiness had mostly been scrubbed from DOOM’s technique. This is starkest on the opening song, “Beef Rapp,” which is quoted extensively by Mos Def in that video. But where Mos’ eyes bug out as he recalls lines—“He wears a mask just to cover the raw flesh/A rather ugly brother with flows that’s gorgeous”— DOOM locks into a low, unwavering growl. (After an early version of Madvillain leaked online, in addition to adding new songs, DOOM re-recorded his vocals for the entire project, abandoning his often buoyant delivery to rappel down several octaves, into a deep baritone; he opens FOOD with an even flatter affect.) While the album is dotted with pops of color and winking sample flips, “Beef Rapp” seems purposefully drab, like both the craft and content are meant to be grayed out.