Exploring Oligarchy with MF DOOM, Hip Hop’s Most Crooked Social Critic

The rapper is best known for his mind-boggling rhyme schemes and literary technique, but hiding under layers of wordplay lies a deeper story: the struggle of those left behind by our nation’s institutions.

When Daniel Dumile was reported to have passed away in the last hours of 2020, the rap scene was shocked. Never had there been more support for the artist, who made a blatant effort to be hidden from the public eye by crafting a universe of alter-egos under which he released albums. Within days, hundreds of acclaimed musicians had made statements praising Dumile’s work, and Instagram posts featuring the rapper’s iconic metal mask sprawled millions of pixels. 

Dumile is commonly recognized as a New York legend, but the rapper was actually born in London, and returned there in 2012 after he was denied re-entry by the United States government following a European tour. This refusal was one event in a series of injustices that Dumile fought, both personally and professionally, over his decades-long career. Rather than backing down, though, Dumile used his experience as a victim of our systems — capitalist socioeconomic structures, the military-industrial complex, etc. — as lyrical fuel. While he was never famous for his political commentary, a deep-dive into the rapper’s discography reveals a fiery critique of the American government and ruling class. 

To start, Dumile’s various aliases parallel the main political archetypes of our own society. DOOM is a likeable leader whose brutal actions are excused on sheer charisma alone; King Geedorah, a spaceborne, Godzilla-inspired monster that sends orders to DOOM, represents an external, all-powerful force that dictates the fates of those trapped within it (much like our own invisible systems); Viktor Vaughn, DOOM’s younger and more aggressive rival, a reflection of our country’s chaotic extremist groups; and the listener, an average bystander, that can’t help but revel somewhat in the violence and mischievousness of those in control, despite knowing that they’re evil. 

It’s no secret that DOOM, the persona Dumile raps as most frequently, takes inspiration in name and attire from Doctor Doom of Marvel Comics, a mechanical mastermind and dictator of the fictional country Latveria. A land free of superheroes, Latveria keeps order through weapons of mass destruction and armed robots. Nobody is allowed in or out of the country, which has extremely tight freedom-of-speech laws, no formal legislation or constitution, and heavy German influence. 

Despite serving as the Fantastic Four’s primary antagonist and a fascist monarch, the Doctor is loved and respected by a large chunk of his nation’s people. In many ways, Latveria is a corrupt mirror of the modern West, an alternate path in which technological innovations failed to prevent violence, poverty, and autocracy. A victim of the former two, the rapper DOOM spared no government, gang, or oligarch from criticism. 

Before it spread to these institutions, though, DOOM’s repugnance was reserved for the music industry. That’s because, even while Dumile made a living off of hip hop, the rapper was a victim to its magnates. Before DOOM was DOOM, when the man behind the mask had yet to adopt it, Dumile was making music with his brother, DJ Subroc. While working on their first LP, the rapper was met with two consecutive tragedies: first, his brother was killed in a car accident in 1994, which slowed the production of their album. However, even though Dumile pushed through and finished the work, the album then was shelved by their label due to racially graphic cover art. Defeated, Dumile left the rap scene for years, living as a vagrant and sleeping on Manhattan street benches. 

There is no doubt that these tragedies gave the Villain the rancorous tinge he’s known for. When Dumile came out of hiding in 1998 with his now-famous moniker and an entirely different style, it was clear that Subroc’s passing had deeply influenced his motives. Now in it for survival rather than camaraderie, DOOM wrote what would soon become his breakout hit, and the first track on his debut studio album, “Doomsday”:

On Doomsday!, ever since the womb

‘Til I’m back where my brother went, that’s what my tomb will say

Right above my government; Dumile (DOOM will lay) 

Either unmarked or engraved, hey, who’s to say?

Doomsday, ever since the womb

‘Til I’m back to the essence, read it off the tomb

Dumile’s vengeance against the rap industry began here and lasted for his entire career. It can even be said that the bitterness of DOOM’s persona only grew stronger over time, like a fermenting wine. One thing is certain: Dumile despised the bureaucracy of hip hop. When asked about why he routinely sent impostors in his place to fake perform at live concerts by Rolling Stone, Dumile responded, “Everything that we do is villain style… I tell you one thing: People are asking more now for live shows and I’m charging more, so it must’ve worked somewhere.” He even bragged about it on the single “Avalanche” with an idiosyncratic swagger: Do a show, same time, watch it.

All things considered, DOOM as a villain hungry for power and fame stands in stark contrast to the artist that created him. With the mysteriousness, the mask, and the mountebank behavior, it’s obvious that Dumile himself only cared about modest money making. In a 2019 interview with Spin Magazine, the rapper explained, “I write rhymes and sh*t to get money. Other than that, I don’t listen to hip-hop music. I listen to jazz music and instrumentals and sh*t like that. I only do this for the simple fact of points-per-rhyme, the point game. It seems to be a profitable thing these days, and nobody else is really paying attention to it. You can be about your points, and if nobody else can do it, you can get some change off that joint, because you’re the only one doing it like that. That’s what I get out of the rhyming.”

At the end of the day, the rapper got exactly what he wanted from the game: cash and cash only. That doesn’t mean Dumile suppressed his views, though; the artist’s disdain for the game and its niceties is explicitly projected through the character of DOOM, who was unrelenting and indiscriminate in his criticism. Early in his career, DOOM’s condemnation spread beyond the music industry and into politics. Most notably, Dumile hated American imperialism and war. On “CELLZ,” he painted a picture of a battle-scarred world that fell victim to its own biases and ignorance:

DOOM from the realm of El Kulum, smelly gel fume

Separating cell womb to Melle Mel, boom

Revelations in Braille, respiration inhale, view

Nations fail and shaking of a snake tail make due

Blazing swords trace the haze, praise the Lord… 

Major vet spaded through the vest with a bayonet

Save your breath, gave a F, pay your debt, they forget

This is one of many off-putting commentary tracks on Born Like This, Dumile’s ninth studio album across all of his aliases. DOOM was known for his rhyme schemes, but many forget his sampling, which is just as intricate and purposeful. “CELLZ” demonstrates this beautifully, beginning with a snippet from Charles Bukowski’s poem “Dinosauria, We.” that offers equally scathing criticism of the military-industrial complex. DOOM made these references clear from the executive position: the album actually takes its name from the documentary in which “Dinosauria, We.” premiered, the poem’s first line reading, “Born like this, into this…” 

It is evident, though, that Dumile did not share Bukowski’s beliefs on religion. Like some of the game’s greatest artists — Rakim, Ice Cube, Q-Tip, and the many others influenced by the Five Percent Nation come to mind — the rapper followed and frequently mentioned Islam. Five years before Born Like This was released, DOOM explained the injustice of Middle Eastern warfare on the latter half of “Strange Ways”:  

They pray four times a day, they pray five

Who ways is strange when it’s time to survive

Some will go of they own free will to die

Others take them with you when they blow sky high

What’s the difference? All you get is lost children

While the bosses sit up behind the desks, it cost billions

To blast humans in half, into calves and arms

Only one side is allowed to have bombs

Similarly, on “Guv’nor,” coming off the 2011 MF DOOM/Jneiro Jaerel collaboration JJ DOOM, the rapper compared the Anglo exploitation of Native Americans to the modern government’s involvement in natural disasters: 

Catch a throatful from the fire vocal

With ash and molten glass like Eyjafjallajökull

The volcano out of Iceland

He’ll conquer and destroy the rap world like the white man

Learnt from a pro as a mentor

Started with a bird nest and burnt it to a cinder

That’ll get the party kicking

Plus your little charred body smelted like chicken

As the dollar continues to lose momentum

He need land from murdered indians that represent ’em

Gold is up, urging all thugs

Trade me y’all chains for cash and splurge it on drugs… 

Vocals spill over like the rolling hills of Dover

Or the Gulf Oil Disaster if preferred you’re after

Depends on your status or your stature

Whether you benefit from the prior or the latter-er

Get the fatter check split

How much for 100,000 tons of Corexit?

These songs all have another theme in common, one that has graced many rappers’ pen and epitomized much of the hip hop movement: escaping a systematic and self-perpetuating culture of violence. Dumile went beyond just detailing his own struggles here, though; he wasn’t afraid to both offer a sympathetic perspective of the government while also calling out its most culpable members. DOOM wrote a bird’s eye view of the gang-police relationship on the first verse of “Strange Ways”: 

He see it as just another felony drug arrest

Any day could be the one he pick the wrong thug to test

Slug through the vest, shot in the street

For pulling heat on a father whose baby’s gotta eat

And when they get hungry, it ain’t sh*t funny

Paid to interfere with how a brother get his money

Now, who’s the real thugs, killers and gangsters?

Set the revolution, let the things bust and thank us

When the smoke clear, you can see the sky again

There will be the chopped off heads of Leviathan

While they were refined and perfected in Dumile’s later projects, these themes of violence and revolution were present before he even crafted the DOOM persona, when Dumile was still rapping with his brother in the ‘90s. In fact, their cancelled album Black Bastards took great inspiration from blaxploitation films. The genre’s “cool, sexual, powerful, conscious, irreverent, nonchalant, quick-witted demeanor” — as USC School of Cinematic Arts professor Todd Boyd describes — has been replicated in virtually every DOOM record since. In a Red Bull Music Academy interview, Dumile recalled, “A lot of that influence also came from the blaxploitation films – we just got into those. My brother Subroc, God bless, he really brought a lot of this material to me. Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, that particular film, a Melvin Van Peebles joint, he brought that in and that kind of set the tone for this record. So subtly, there’s the whole blaxploitation thing and that spun into the whole record Black Bastards.” Again, from “CELLZ,” now in the second verse: 

Crime pays no dental nor medical

Unless you catch retirement, county, state or federal

You heard like roaring waters in a seashell

If a tree fell, you couldn’t tell from three cell

Be real careful, they tell him by the earful

Kids doing skid bids, acting out is terrible

This tale of caution isn’t an isolated example; Dumile repeatedly utilized his cast of characters as warnings to illustrate larger societal issues like poverty and violence. These ideas are prominent in the fast-moving, lighthearted “GAZZILLION EAR,” coming from the same album: 

Villain man never ran with krills in his hand and

Won’t stop rockin’ til he clocked in a gazillion grand

Tillin’ the wasteland sands

Raps on backs of treasure maps, stacks to the ceilin’ fan

He rest when he’s ashes

Ask ’em after ten miles in his galoshes, smashes stashes

Chip on his shoulder with a slip on holster

A clip, a folder and his grip on a boulder bolster

They supposed to know

The fictional gangster described in the previous track meets his end on the somber “Accordion,” where DOOM narrates his own villainous deeds in an allegory of the time-bomb lifestyle of a street-level criminal: 

Living off borrowed time, the clock tick faster

That’d be the hour they knock the slick blaster

Dick Dastardly and Muttley with sick laughter

A gun fight and they come to cut the mixmaster

I-C-E cold, nice to be old

Y2G stee twice to threefold

He sold scrolls, lo and behold

Know who’s the illest ever like the greatest story told

Keep your glory, gold and glitter

For half, half of his n*ggas’ll take him out the picture

The other half is rich and it don’t mean sh*t-ta

Villain: a mixture between both with a twist of liquor

“Accordion,” one of DOOM’s most popular and well-received songs, comes from the LP Madvillainy (widely regarded as the artist’s magnum opus), which was written in 2004. Seventeen years later, in a generation of “forever wars,” global crises, and systematic disenfranchisement, DOOM’s fictional dystopia isn’t so far from the truth. After decades of dominating the underground, Dumile solidified his spot at the peak of the mountain — as a sound selector, a rap scholar, and a political prophet. Now, moving into a new era in both politics and music, let’s hope we’ve learned our lesson from the Metal Faced Villain. 

Rest in Peace, MF DOOM.