Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself.
—CHARLES BUKOWSKI
The year 1997 marked a pivotal moment for hip-hop as it transitioned from insurgent outlier to darling of the mainstream, though not without significant growing pains. Fulfilling their promise of industry domination, Wu-Tang Clan literally blasted out of the gates with “Triumph,” the first single off their heavily anticipated Wu-Tang Forever (Loud/RCA), the follow-up to Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). It was accompanied by a slick, CGI-heavy video by soon-to-be Hollywood mainstay, Brett Ratner, which cost a cool $800,000 to make. Barely a month later, the rap world was mourning the tragic loss of one of its biggest stars, The Notorious B.I.G., victim of a drive-by shooting in LA on March 9. His death followed in the wake of that of another icon’s—Tupac Shakur—only six months earlier, and in an identical manner. What all three acts had in common were much-hyped double albums (B.I.G.’s delivered posthumously) that moved millions of units, dominating the charts. Amid all the hubbub, DOOM’s first Fondle ’Em twelve-inch—an anonymous white label, catalog number FE008—quietly slipped out into the world, illustrating the deep divide between major labels and independents.
As rap joined the upper echelons of big business, DOOM was just happy to have a record out for the first time in six years. His under-the-radar single included “Dead Bent”; “Gas Drawls,” recorded and mixed at his buddy Web D’s studio in Long Beach; and “Hey!,” recorded and mixed at Stretch Armstrong’s apartment, along with the instrumentals on the B-side. That’s as much information as the center label provided besides “produced, mixed, written, arranged & flipped by MF DOOM.” The only artwork appeared on the B-side—a black-and-white scanned image of his comic-book namesake’s mask, cropped so only the eyes and nose were visible, beneath the logo for Roaring Spring Compositions, a brand of marbleized notebooks popular among elementary school kids and MCs.
But cryptic illustrations aside, the only thing that really mattered to DOOM was how these songs, mastered from four-track cassette, sounded. “DOOM’s style at times was very basement demo-esque and that was deliberate,” observes Fondle ’Em chief Bobbito Garcia. “And it was brilliant because if you think about the context of ’96 to ’98, that’s the Bad Boy era where things are like super mega polished and very like radio playable, and DOOM, you know, was like the complete opposite of that—still quirky and still nice with his rhymes, and still a wordsmith, you know, [with] vocabulary and cadence, but the quality of the recordings wasn’t great. But that’s what endeared the audience to it.”1 Whenever he played these demos on the radio, Garcia says the telephone lines always lit up.
The printed credits also told only part of the story. Earlier versions of these songs had been recorded at Rich Keller’s New Jersey studio, Depth Charge Studios in Virginia, and a mystery spot in Atlanta run by DOOM’s friend and sometime-collaborator Mr. Fantastik, an equally shadowy figure who would come to inhabit the Villain’s freaky multiverse. About Mr. Fantastik, whose true identity has become the subject of much internet speculation, DOOM only offered, “He’s from New York, but he moved out to Atlanta before I did, and he been out here for a while. And he always tryin’ to get me to get a crib down here, and, you know, I’m always comin’ back and forth, chillin’ with him. He’s straight baller status, so every time I come down, it’s like, whatever, everything is on him—strip clubs and all that shit. He’s straight ballin’, but, you know, he’s the one who introduced me to down here.”2 Since Fantastik only ever appeared on two tracks with DOOM, and nowhere else, it’s fair to assume that he didn’t depend on rap to earn a living. Furthermore, his maintaining a low profile might be attributed to the fact that, like his friend, he valued his privacy and didn’t want to put his business out there.
Sold through Bobbito’s Footwork, Fat Beats, and early e-commerce websites such as Sandbox Automatic and HipHopSite.com, the first pressing—all one thousand copies—was quickly scooped up by a growing audience disheartened by rap’s mainstream trajectory. Even DOOM was pleasantly surprised, saying, “Damn! We do that every month, it’ll be on!”3 And he wasn’t wrong. Considering that zero money was put into the record’s promotion, and it sold strictly by word of mouth, the release proved an unqualified success, paving the way for two more singles.
Later in 1997, Fondle ’Em dropped “Greenbacks,” credited to “King Ghidora featuring Megalon,” with “Go with the Flow” on the B-side, credited to MF DOOM and Sci Fly (who were one and the same). Following in 1998 came “The M.I.C.” with “Red & Gold”—both produced by Metal Fingers, DOOM’s production alias. Aside from Megalon, a member of the Monsta Island collective, every other credit on those releases belonged to DOOM, who was apparently already enjoying confusing people with his numerous alter egos. His confidence buoyed with each sold-out pressing, he eventually decided that the time was ripe for an album. Garcia, in fact, was so psyched about releasing only the second LP in his catalog (after the Juggaknots self-titled debut) that he suggested doing full-color artwork this time around.
It was at this crucial juncture that the universe serendipitously reinserted Blake Lethem into the mix. Lethem had gone AWOL years earlier after forming a group with Pete Nice. Landing in jail for dealing drugs, he had spent the past ten years in and out of the system for parole violations. Finally returning to the city in 1996, he started hustling for artwork jobs to support himself. After hearing the buzz on the streets about Fondle ’Em, he decided to pay Garcia a visit at Footworks.
As Lethem recalls, “DOOM walks in and he’s asking Bob, ‘Yo, you know any good artists who can put this together?’ And I happened to be in the corner, and Bob points to me. And we just clicked. And it turned out we had this long history. Even though I didn’t know DOOM from the KMD days, I’m pretty much behind-the-scenes responsible for all of that.”4 Certainly, Lethem’s sudden disappearance had left the door open for Pete Nice and Serch, whom he had introduced, to join forces as 3rd Bass. And without the efforts of 3rd Bass, KMD might never have had the opportunity to appear on a hit record or be signed to a major label. Sharing a common lineage in the game, these two OGs had rediscovered each other when they each had something to prove and needed each other the most. Their synergy would leave an indelible impression on an art form entering its pop phase at the turn of the millennium.
DOOM had already arrived at a title for his full-length—Operation: Doomsday—from the best-selling Sidney Sheldon thriller The Doomsday Conspiracy (William Morrow, 1991). Loosely based on the Roswell incident of 1947, the story follows passengers on a bus in Switzerland who witness the crash of a UFO, that authorities claim as a weather balloon. The protagonist of the story, a member of US naval intelligence, stumbles on a plot called Operation Doomsday to keep the witnesses silent and cover up the fact that aliens have been in communication with governments on Earth for a long time. For DOOM, the title played perfectly into the concept for his new persona as he declared his mission to destroy rap.
Despite already being an accomplished visual artist in his own right, he may have felt he needed help with the artwork, as this was the first time he was putting together an entire album by himself. Perhaps the whole Black Bastards cover imbroglio remained fresh in his mind as well, prompting him to remove himself from the process. Regardless, Lethem provided an excellent collaborator to bounce around ideas while also being able to execute concepts that were in DOOM’s head.
The cover image, featuring an illustration of Doctor Doom wearing his trademark metal face mask and green cape, came from an actual frame from a Marvel edition of The Fantastic Four. Lethem modified the cape to look more like a hoodie by substituting drawstrings for the clasp, but the mic in DOOM’s clenched metal fist was part of the original illustration. Using graffiti-style lettering, he signed it “MF DOOM?”
By far, Lethem’s biggest contribution to the DOOM mythos, however, was designing the infamous mask, which the rapper never failed to be seen without in public. “DOOM was very interested in maintaining his anonymity and I immediately saw the benefit of that ’cause we used to sit in the club at the bar and drink and nobody would even look twice at him. Nobody bothered us,” he says. “Then he could throw on the mask and jump onstage and the whole crowd is, like, in awe and rhyming along with every lyric. A lot of artists don’t enjoy that kind of freedom, so the mask was important to him.”5
Though DOOM respected the way Ghostface Killah kept his identity concealed beneath a stocking cap, he was also looking for something a little more substantial and permanent. “He wanted something unique and something that spoke to the metal face persona,” says Lethem, “so the first thing we copped was, you know, these Halloween masks with the rubber band in the back, and it’s plastic with a little mouth hole cut out—what you wore as a kid.”6 Initially, they bought a facsimile of the mask worn by the pro wrestler Kane at a ninety-nine-cent store. Lethem used a razor blade to cut and shape it into a slightly different form, squaring out the eyes like Doctor Doom. Then he spray-painted the entire mask with metallic silver Rust-Oleum. Though it bore some resemblance to the comic-book character’s visage, it didn’t cover the whole face, cutting off at the top lip with two extensions on either side of the mouth. Since this early prototype of the mask wasn’t very sturdy, it didn’t survive DOOM’s first video shoots, when a crew member accidentally sat on it between takes.
Lethem next proposed trying to procure a helmet from a real medieval suit of armor. He stumbled upon the next best thing at Forbidden Planet, a store on Broadway in the East Village that specialized in toys, graphic novels, comics, science fiction, manga, anime, T-shirts, statues, art books, posters, games, and movie memorabilia. The movie Gladiator (2000), starring Russell Crowe, had just been released, and in the store’s window display, Lethem spotted a replica of the mask that Crowe wore in the film. Rendered in heavy-gauge metal, it weighed about twenty-five pounds. He brought it to his neighbor on Second Avenue, a German sculptor who owned welding equipment, to make some modifications, removing the faceplate from the helmet, and sanding down any rough edges. Then, he had to figure out how to keep the mask mounted on DOOM’s face. Lethem found the solution by using the webbing inside a construction worker’s helmet. “I took the webbing out and I put two screws through the temples of the mask and put a hinge and a screw into the webbing of the construction helmet,” he says. “So, now you had, like, a fitted cap in the back of this metal [face] plate.”7
DOOM did his best to take care of it, even procuring a small metal case as its home, but signs of wear inevitably started showing. When he guzzled Jack Daniel’s, for example, the mask developed a patina of rust around the mouth. This prompted several modifications, including taking it to an auto body shop to get the whole thing chromed. A gem enthusiast, DOOM also had a ruby, his birthstone, embedded into the forehead as symbolic of the third eye. Over the years, he added even more customization on the interior, to which, obviously, not everyone was privy, including padding around the cheeks, crushed pieces of amethyst, and a copper spiral at the forehead. The mask naturally evolved into a huge part of his identity and aesthetic. Previously, only superheroes and, perhaps, pro wrestlers wore masks. Rappers were still too preoccupied with authenticity, but DOOM one-upped them all.
“I’m not that dude at all,” replied DOOM, when asked about the mask. “I am writing about a character. It’s a little bit based on my personality, but it’s definitely exaggerated, you know. If you gonna have a character, make him into a character.… [Then] you can have the character be able to do or be able to say anything.”8 After all, DOOM always claimed that his own life was way too boring to write about—imagination was where it was at. He further clarified, “Zev didn’t rock a mask and I have other characters that don’t wear masks, too—and they all have their own thing that makes them stand out. My albums are all characters and together they’re part of this lineage of stories and albums written by me.”9 But where performance was concerned, he was as much of an actor as a writer, ascribing the mask as a means to further develop the character.
Another equally important reason for donning a mask was to allow himself some measure of privacy by creating distance between his personal life and what he did for a living. “I like to separate my situation—my home life and my family life,” he said. “The people I know in the neighborhood don’t even know what I do. I’m just a dude who lives right there, or the dude down the street that comes into the store. I need my life. I’m not trying to change my life for this rap shit, for real. Definitely not. Come on, not when you can do both. I enjoy music—making music. I make money with this music, live off music, share music, but you still need to have your life.”10 Simply by virtue of being a low-key individual, who had already experienced the pitfalls of fame at an early age, he was over the concept of celebrity and actively sought to subvert it. Therefore, the mask offered anonymity.
DOOM disavowed a lot of the trappings associated with rap—the jewels, the cars, the fashion. “It don’t matter what you look like—your race, your style, if you’re cute or fuckin’ ugly,” he said. “None of that shit matters when it comes down to the music. In jazz, that’s what it used to be like. But with hip-hop, it’s such a new form of music that it got exploited to the point where what you look like and what you’re wearing and how big your chain is matters first. Then people check out the album and see how whack it is. So, DOOM is just your average Joe, understand? It’s all about the skills, so it don’t matter what he look like. He could be you. He could be me.”11 Like Miles Davis, well-known for playing trumpet with his back to the audience, DOOM was making a bold statement: Don’t look at me but listen to the content of my lyrics and my music.
While acknowledging rap as a live performance medium, he said, “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?”12
Pushing thirty, with a spare tire slowly spreading around his midsection and his hair thinning on top, DOOM also realized that he was no Adonis, but would have to compete against a younger generation of rappers coming up. Covering his face allowed him the advantage of being someone else, so he could let it all hang out. Whether a genius gimmick or marketing tool, the mask was obviously something he had put a lot of thought into, and it seemed to be the answer to many of his concerns. “Plus, it’s like, damn, the temptation to just fuck with people’s heads like that, I just can’t resist,” he admitted. “The funny thing is, many people, from fans to press, et cetera, seem to have bought the story to the point where they forget you’re not actually a supervillain.”13