5 Dope MF Doom Tracks (A Lesson For Me, and Hopefully You Too)

I love hip-hop. I could really talk about it just about all day. And being the lover of hip hop that I am requires loads of research. It can get tiring yes, but when you love something you'll go that much farther to learn more about it or make it happy (at least I don't have to buy it dinner though, that's always a plus). But recently my interest has peaked hearing about this MF DOOM character (just ONE of his characters, I might add), so I had to go back and do a bit of research on him, and I wasn't disappointed with what I found. Here are my 5 stand out MF DOOM tracks.

Rhymes Like Dimes

This was probably the first song from DOOM I heard, and it definitely had me wanting more just from hearing the beat. Highlights from DOOM's flow include lines like "classical slapstick rappers need chap stick", and he makes it all sound so great even without drums. One thing that definitely caught me by surprise though was the Bobbito feature towards the end of the track!  I know nothing of his hip-hop history, but if you're a former PlayStation gamer like me, you know Bobbito from NBA Street Vol. 2!

One Beer

This song is an example of some fantastic sampling from DOOM (I'm not sure if he produced this song, but I do know he has a history of producing, most recently for Joey Bada$$), and he rides the beat effortlessly in his trademark, fast paced, never slowed down flow. I thought this sample had sounded familiar, and realized that Wiz Khalifa had used the same sound on the song "Visions" off of his incredibly successful Kush & Orange Juice mix tape.

America's Most Blunted

This song features a crazy, almost cartoon like beat and great verses from DOOM and the very fittingly trippy voiced Lord Quas. This track is definitely one for the smokers, it's evident by not only the sound of bong hits in the beginning, but the small Easter eggs put in towards the end of the track, sounds from who knows what. If I could say one thing about Madvilliany as a whole, it'd have to be that so far it's my favorite DOOM project to listen to, the beats are fantastic and DOOM is at the top of his game with his rhymes.

Old School Rules

 This shit right here is RAW! Real rap raw (as the legendary Chocolate Droppa would say) is the only way to define this song, and with a beat that is just begging for some hard bars to be spit over it, DOOM and the legendary Talib Kweli do just that on this one. You could almost call this a cypher (certainly better than what we saw at the BET Awards this year)!

A.T.H.F

This is something I have never seen before in rap, and I have to say I like it a lot. I'm not even a big fan of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but DOOM got them in a couple of skits, and even a song!  Meatwad was spitting some hot rhymes on one of those tracks for a second. This comes from the Danger Doom album The Mouse and The Mask, which if you didn't know is a collaboration of DOOM and Danger Mouse (if you don't know Danger Mouse, he's produced a bunch of stuff for the Gorillaz). The Mouse and The Mask saw a couple of mainstream features for DOOM (like Ghostface Killah, Cee-Lo Green, and Talib Kweli) which is something you don't see a lot of.

So coming from a new DOOM listener, I have to say these tracks are definitely enough to keep me interested and see what else DOOM has to offer (although it's hard to keep track of all of his alias'). I have yet to listen to other great albums of his that were recommended, such as his Viktor Vaughn stuff and Black Bastards. Listening to his MM...FOOD album I feel like I was introduced to some of the core ways of how hip-hop started, with all of the features of samples talking about Doctor Doom and his evil reign of terror. Hip-hop truly is taking something and turning it into something better, and DOOM definitely did that with MM...FOOD, and he continues to do it with even his newer stuff, sticking to the roots of real emceeing and even producing. So if there's one thing I could say is thanks DOOM, maybe you're not so evil after all...