How MF DOOM convinced Mos Def he needed to buy a record player
MF DOOM was a rapper’s rapper. Countless MCs looked up to and admired him, and Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, was one such artist. DOOM greatly influenced his life and work.
Even before DOOM passed away in 2020, Bey had already made it crystal-clear how much he admired his fellow rapper. He regularly performed covers of DOOM’s songs on stage as part of a project he called “Beyondoom,” which he has continued to return to since DOOM’s death.
Years before DOOM died, back in 2009, a video appeared online showing Bey in the studio while he was recording his fourth album The Ecstatic. DOOM was a big influence on the record, and, in the clip, Bey talked about why exactly he was so drawn to the masked villain.
As a teenager, Bey had been a big fan of pioneering, experimental jazz musicians. He especially loved John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme album, Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, and Charles Mingus’ The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, but, as an aspiring young rapper, Bey was also deeply fascinated by rhymes.
Fast forward to when MF DOOM emerged on the scene, and Bey had discovered a figure who seemed to capture all these tendencies he was drawn to. DOOM was experimental and strange, like the jazz musicians Bey had loved so much as a kid, but he was also one of the most sophisticated lyricists around.
“He rhymes as weird as I feel,” Bey said of DOOM in the clip.
There was one DOOM album in particular, released in the 2000s, that affected Bey so much that he literally went out and bought a record player to justify getting it on vinyl. It was 2004’s Madvillainy, the only album created by DOOM and Madlib’s collaborative Madvillain project.
Madvillainy is a cult classic, understood to be a pivotal work of alternative hip-hop. It wasn’t an easy listen by any means, but, like the best work of Coltrane, Davis and Mingus, it was rewarding for those willing to put the time in. Yasiin Bey naturally adored it.
“When I saw that Madvillain record, I bought it on vinyl, and I didn’t even have a record player,” Bey admitted. “I bought it just to stare at the album. I stared at it and I just kept going, ‘I understand it.’”