About

One of the greatest rap full-lengths of all time. They don't come any more essential than this. Operation: Doomsday originally appeared on Fondle 'Em in 1999, and introduced MF DOOM to most of us outside the Tri State area. Daniel Dumile had been working undercover for some time, having disappeared when KMD splintered and his brother DJ Subroc died; a name change later and Zev Love X was MF DOOM, a supervillain behind a metal mask who would pioneer a trippier but no less biting form of East Coast boom bap. The album was well received at the time, but its importance has snowballed in the years since it was released - in 2023, its influence can be heard across the underground spectrum, in Los Angeles' beat scene, Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler, in Kaytranada, even in the UK's club landscape.

You could say that DOOM was just building on the streetwise surrealism of Kool Keith, but he possessed a unique swagger and production style that's been rinsed and repeated for over two decades now. He managed to do something special here, constructing skits from unfussy nerd culture - not the middle class nerd fare that generation x steered into the mainstream, but the kind of vivid sci-fi and comicbook TV trash that would belt out of flickering CRT boxes over Frosted Flakes on a Saturday, later inspiring Adult Swim. In between the skits, DOOM made neck-snapping beats out of forgotten disco and funk loops, rapping as if he'd swallowed a compendium of cultural phraseology and then belched it up, semi-digested. Every moment here, even if it isn't as developed as some of his later work (we highly recommend the crown jewel: King Gheedorah's "Take Me To Your Leader"), has been completely absorbed into the architecture of the era. Even when we can't see it, it's towering over us like a Roman archway. — (via Label)

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Label: Rhymesayers Entertainment, Metal Face Records
Format: 2x Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue
Country: US
Reissued: 2023 / Original Release: Oct 19, 1999
Genre: Hip Hop

File under: Hip Hop 90s
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