MF Doom in the Upcoming Issue of The New Yorker [excerpt]

This is an excerpt of an excerpt from “The Mask of Doom: A Nonconformist Rapper’s Second Act,” from The New Yorker, Sep. 21, 2009:

Taken from the Stones Throw site:

For MF DOOM, Dumile wanted to create a character with a complete backstory, which he would reference through a series of albums. “The story was corning together, and it worked and became popular. And now people wanted to see shows, and I’m like, how do I do that?”

“I wanted to get onstage and orate, without people thinking about the normal things people think about. Like girls being like, ‘Oh, he’s sexy,’ or ‘I don’t want him, he’s ugly,’ and then other dudes sizing you up. A visual always brings a first impression. But if there’s going to be a first impression I might as well use it to control the story. So why not do something like throw a mask on?”

Or throw the mask on someone else Dumile routinely sends out one of his comrades in the DOOM costume and has him lip-sync the entire show. He sees this as a logical extension of the DOOM idea. Fans who have paid for tickets tend to disagree.

If Dumile had his way, he would take it further. He jokes that he’d like to dart backstage after a performance, take off the mask, and then wade into the crowd – beer in hand – and applaud his own work in conversations with strangers, if the subject of DOOM comes up, Dumile will simply play along, like Peter Parker or Bruce Wayne.

Read the entire excerpt here, and of course, the whole article in The New Yorker next week.