The best show of MF DOOM’s career and why it could never be beaten
MF DOOM was a master of hip-hop. Whether as a rapper, writer or producer, he was one of the most singular figures of his generation — and that’s even before we take into account his unique, masked look.
But while DOOM was known best for intricate rhyming patterns and wordplay, his distinct production sound, and his villainous alteregos, he was also, at heart, a performer. The man was fundamentally a star of the stage.
DOOM gigged a lot during his lifetime, particularly across Europe throughout the last decade of his life. But it wasn’t these headline shows that he enjoyed the most. The performances he tended to treasure above all others were those he did during the early stages of his career, as he explained to Exclaim! in 2004.
“Man,” he told his interviewer, “some of my best shows are small shows.”
But there were larger gigs from his early career in the ’90s that DOOM was really fond of, too, and they were done alongside some legendary figures. “The biggest shows that was ill back in the day,” he said, “was on the road with [Big Daddy] Kane, 3rd Bass, and Digital Underground with 2Pac. [Queen] Latifah was on the road with us, too.”
A line-up like that is quite remarkable to consider today, so many years later, and the shows were, in DOOM’s own words, “fuckin’ crazy, man.” He was still finding his feet as an artist around this period, so, given the company he was keeping, he was far from the main draw of these gigs. But he took that in his stride.
Mentioning gigs this collective did in “coliseums in North Carolina” for around “10,000 people” as being notably special, DOOM explained that he’d only be onstage “for 16 bars. One minute.” His role during these gigs was, simply, to contribute to the set of the group 3rd Bass, whose song ‘The Gas Face’ he featured on. That meant his time in the limelight was limited.
DOOM was still “nervous as hell” before these appearances on stage, but the gigs themselves were so crazy that he would always come off again buzzing. “But as soon as I get offstage,” he said of his pre-show jitters, “it goes away, and the crowd is spinning like, ‘Ohhhhh!’ So those times kinda set it off. In my mind, those were the best times.”
Those days were a lightning-in-a-bottle sort of moment. It seems bizarre to consider that all these legendary figures could have been together for a gig — MF DOOM, Big Daddy Kane, Tupac Shakur, Queen Latifah — but that’s how it was. Every generation has its icons, but the crowds at those hip-hop gigs in North Carolina witnessed something unrepeatable.