The residents of Richmond, Virginia, have tapped into their good taste in music and humour to name their brand new bike lane road sweeper MF Broom after the late rapper MF Doom.
The name was fallen upon via crowdsourcing ideas from the city and organising polls on Twitter. Besides MF Broom, other considered names for the new clean machine included Kate Brush, Meryl Sweep, Dirt Reynolds, Bike Dyson, LeBroom James, and The Grim Sweeper — the latter of which made it all the way to the final round of voting before losing 59%-41% to MF BROOM.
“The people have spoken!” Venture Richmond tweeted. “We crowdsourced name ideas, you voted, and the name of the new @DPW_RichmondVAbike lane sweeper is… MF BROOM.” According to Venture Richmond, the city of Richmond will even host a naming ceremony for the street sweeper, with details to be announced soon. “Until then, enjoy your clean bike lanes!”
The famous metal masked rapper sadly passed away in 2020. Since then, the British-American has received recognition in the form of street names, Atmosphere songs, Thom Yorke remixes, and more.
In life, MF Doom was blessed with a similar satirical sense of humour, and his lyrical work often showed the funny side of quotidian objects and subject matter. On his early solo album Operation: Doomsday, he delivered his comical stories over strange 1980s R&B and Scooby Doo samples. But most famously, he released his masterpiece fifth studio album Mm..Food in 2004. The record was written almost entirely to honour his love of food.
He once explained that Mm..Food was “about the things you find on a picnic, or at a picnic table”. The song titles mostly reference different food and drink items, and the lyrics are studded with allegory and double entendres.
Listen to ‘Rapp Snitch Knishes’ (Feat. Mr. Fantastik) from Mm..Food below.
