It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others—playing people against one another and making them pursue you.
—ROBERT GREENE, THE 48 LAWS OF POWER
Through no small effort, DOOM’s uncompromising vision finally came to realization on October 19, 1999, with the release of Operation: Doomsday, an album of many firsts. Coming a decade after his introduction to the music industry, it marked his inaugural solo effort, as well as the first time that DOOM exercised complete creative control over his music and how it was presented. The first long-player in the Fondle ’Em catalog to feature full-color artwork, this album could also compete with all the other LPs filling record store racks, as it aspired to more than merely a naked white label aimed at a select audience of deejays. In fact, the record felt right at home among other rap releases that dropped the same day—including Handsome Boy Modeling School’s So … How’s Your Girl? (Tommy Boy/Warners), Pharoahe Monch’s Internal Affairs (Rawkus/Priority), and U-God’s Golden Arms Redemption (Wu-Tang/Priority).
With his foot in the door, DOOM was, once again, primed to make an impression on a whole new era of rap that saw major-label dominance challenged, not only by a healthy independent scene, but also the technological innovations of digital downloading and streaming. Earlier, in June of that year, Napster had emerged as a file-sharing application that allowed individuals to swap whole music collections online, and the novelty of it all was changing the way people consumed music. Despite the revenue lost from sales of physical product, artists inherited a new form of promotion in the ability to go “viral” online, and all these emerging trends worked in DOOM’s favor. He no longer needed to rely on the established infrastructure of the music industry to promote and sell his music. He also acknowledged the virtues of being small and independent. By remaining uncompromising in creativity and quality, and consistent in output, the audience would seek him out, allowing him to grow his career without the support of multinational companies, which is exactly what he did.
Operation: Doomsday marked the first in a succession of independent releases that saw DOOM dominating rap in the early aughts, despite not having a major-label deal and barely registering on the charts. Like the alter ego he created for himself, he practically inhabited his own parallel universe. It’s as if he had taken a page—or pages—out of Robert Greene’s New York Times best-seller The 48 Laws of Power, published the month before his album dropped. Law 25, for example, stated, “Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Recreate yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image, rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions. Your power will be enhanced, and your character will seem larger than life.”1
It seems as if DOOM took such advice to heart during his prolific run—preserving, as well, his free-agent status by refusing to commit to one label. His motivations for doing so, however, appear born out of necessity more than anything else because he was still in survival mode. As he told an audience at the Red Bull Music Academy in Madrid in 2011, “So one of the things that we did was made sure we had control over the entities, control over the business, you know, not to where you sign a deal where you could only make records for one company. Threw that out, know what I’m saying?”2 Compared to his prior experience at Elektra, the simple and straightforward dealings with Garcia had converted him into a true believer in the independent route. “So, what it freed up was, it made it possible to solicit work to other people,” he added. “So as much work as you could do, now I had the freedom to put it out. With the success of the Fondle ’Em stuff, other cats wanted me to do maybe a verse here or do a record for them, so as many people as was coming to me, it’s like, ‘All right, yo, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.’ I had to get back up and get this bread, you know what I’m saying? But I guess on the outside, it looked like I was doin’ a lot of records, which is cool, though.”3
While money may have been a major motivation, DOOM also demonstrated a keen understanding of his audience as well as the lane he was creating for himself in rap. “I feel like it’s not really like an overextended thing, it’s more of a niche thing,” he said, “Certain people like certain things. It might be thrift store clothes; you know what I’m saying? So, they’ll go to the thrift store instead of going to Macy’s to get whatever’s supposed to be the high-end shit. It’s a certain quality that people look for, and we provide that same quality.”4
Considered a classic today, Operation: Doomsday, the lynchpin of DOOM’s subterranean dynasty, still had to fight an uphill battle for recognition, released, as it was, without any traditional promotion. Sonically, too, it remained somewhat of an anomaly, relying heavily on syrupy quiet-storm hits of the eighties and other rap records as sample sources, which violated the unspoken standards of crate-digging.
“Yo, that shit came from the fuckin’ deejay parties in the park and bein’ on some like, the girls want to hear one thing and the niggas want to hear one thing,” said DOOM, stubbornly defending his creative decisions. “See I always looked for that blend to keep the party movin’ when I was deejayin’. So, I took that style and incorporated it into makin’ beats, you know what I’m sayin’, to achieve the same effect except with lyrics on it.”5 In hindsight, it was a genius move that made his music more accessible. In addition, it wasn’t too far removed from how a hit-maker like Puff Daddy built his Bad Boy empire, co-opting eighties classics like the Police’s “Every Breath You Take,” and serving up a kind of rap karaoke version—albeit infinitely more polished and cleaner than anything DOOM ever did.
But the fact that DOOM’s production style was purposely sloppy also helped endear him to an audience of hip-hop heads. While taking the better part of five years to make, the record still sounded somewhat half-baked. Back in the days, Subroc had been the finisher, polishing up and putting together ideas his brother had painted with broad strokes. Now that DOOM was operating on his own, he lacked that important editing function. Esteemed Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau observed, “As concept, this could get tedious fast.… the album never comes into full focus. But it does flow, as music and as signifying.”6 While not dismissing the record entirely, he did acknowledge something special about DOOM, adding, “Message: this smart guy had some horrible setbacks and came out the other side, a role model, you might say.”7
Of the album’s nineteen tracks, seven had already been released on twelve-inch singles. But, to his credit, DOOM took the time to remix them, sometimes even redoing the vocals. Out of the twelve new tracks, five comprised extended skits that incorporated snippets from various Fantastic Four cartoons and the early hip-hop film Wild Style to outline DOOM’s back story. “Hero vs. Villain,” a spoken-word track featuring DOOM’s friend E. Mason, who had helped him assemble all the material for the skits at his DC studio, was the only track on which DOOM does not appear. So that left six new vocal tracks, four featuring members of Monsta Island Czars.
Grimm got the nod on “Tick, Tick …,” which famously sampled the cascading strings at the end of “Glass Onion” from The Beatles (Apple, 1968). Longtime collaborator, Tommy Gunn, who first served as DOOM’s lyrical foil on “Operation: Greenbacks,” returned on “The Finest,” named after the SOS Band song it sampled. He also resurfaced as Megalon on “Who You Think I Am?” a “Protect Ya Neck”–style posse cut also featuring King Cesar, Rodan, Kamackeris, and Kong (along with DOOM as King Ghidra)—clearly a setup for the Monsta Island project that was in progress.
In addition to giving his crew some shine, DOOM employed the guest vocals of an unknown singer he had met randomly named Pebbles the Invisible Girl. She popped up on the title track, “Doomsday,” singing the hook from Sade’s “Kiss of Life” (Epic, 1992), on which the song was based, and returned on “The Finest.” Though the two never worked together again, DOOM established a precedent—to always include some female representation on his albums, whether an MC or singer. Incidentally, he wasn’t shy about breaking out into song himself as he did on the intro to “Dead Bent,” singing, “Ooh, you’re like the sun / Chasing all the rain away,” an interpolation of the lyrics to Atlantic Starr’s “Always” (Warner, 1987).
Of course, he couldn’t forget about his homeboy Kurious, who made a guest appearance on one of the album’s most personal tracks, “?” Over a sped-up loop of Isaac Hayes’s “Vykkii,” (HBS, 1975), which set the sentimental mood for the track, DOOM stepped out of character, once again, to reminisce about his deceased brother, whom he addressed directly:
Like my twin brother, we did everything together
From hundred raka’at salats to copping butter leathers
Remember when you went and got the dark blue Ballys
I had all the different color Cazals and Gazelles
The “SUBROC” three-finger ring with the ruby in the “O”, ock
Truly the illest dynamic duo on the whole block
I keep a flick of you with the machete sword in your hand
Everything is going according to plan man.
It’s a poignant moment that stuck out from a general tone of humor and zaniness, and those perceptive and familiar enough would have finally made the connection to KMD. DOOM delved into his personal space only one other time, for the hook of the album’s title track, on which he rapped, “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 / Either unmarked or engraved, hey, who’s to say?” Sub’s legacy obviously hovered over the entire proceedings. As testament to their bond, the back cover of the LP included a black-and-white photo of the two brothers at Dr. York’s upstate New York compound, dressed head to toe in the white robes of the Ansaars (with a black bar over DOOM’s eyes to conceal his identity).
Operation: Doomsday, which saw DOOM raising a new flag and planting the seeds for plenty of more projects to come, represented his organic evolution as an artist. Not content to simply pick up where he left off, he went out of his way to develop a new style and break new ground while staying committed to his ideals. Against the backdrop of slick, commercial product being churned out by the music industry, the album may have appeared somewhat of a hot mess, but, in hindsight, it provided the perfect antidote to the so-called “shiny suit” era, attracting a large following in the underground.
Thanks to the buzz built by the singles and his occasional appearances, live and on the radio, the album sold steadily via word of mouth. “The total records pressed were 4,500—everything sold by Fat Beats,” says Garcia. “There was no demand for reorders. So, me and DOOM just kind of like shook hands, you know, I paid him for everything that was due. It was super clean.”8 With a vinyl LP wholesaling for between $5.99 and $7.99 at the time, DOOM’s cut may have only amounted to a modest profit. But the satisfaction of making money off music again, after the better part of a decade, must have felt incredibly redeeming. This small victory inspired many larger ones to come.
Bigg Jus (Justin Ingleton) first met DOOM at the video shoot for “The Gas Face” in 1989. At the time, the Company Flow MC was just a young graf writer, tagging along with his man Shake, a dancer for Run-DMC, who knew about the shoot. He had a chance to kick it with a young Zev Love X, himself a newcomer to the industry, but that was the extent of their interaction. “The next time I seen him again was around the time he got dropped from his label, and I was literally driving by,” says Jus. “I think he was in the Village. I drove past him. He had like a full-size canvas of the Black Bastards album that he was holding. He had his head down, and I was going to stop, but he looked sad as hell. I knew about his brother and everything and I just let that one be.”
In the meantime, Jus joined El-P (Jaime Meline) and DJ Mr. Len (Leonard Smythe) to form one of the biggest groups to emerge from the New York underground. Though Company Flow only released one album, Funcrusher Plus (Rawkus, 1997), they exerted an inordinate influence on the scene—their rallying cry, “independent as fuck,” reverberating long after their breakup before the turn of the millennium. Jus left the group to pursue a solo career, but like former partner-in-rhyme El-P, who founded Definitive Jux as a home to release his music, he ended up starting an independent label of his own with a couple of partners. But years earlier in 1997, Jus ran into DOOM for a third time while shooting Company Flow’s first official video for Rawkus.
Shot at the Transit Museum on Court Street in downtown Brooklyn, “End to End Burners” was about graffiti pieces that covered a whole car. “It’s like the way the museum is set up, it’s a train station and you have different train cars from different eras,” says Jus. “So, at some point in time when the video shoot was winding down or they were shooting different scenes, I started going through the cars and when I went into one car, I looked and it was DOOM sleeping on the train like a homeless person, basically. Like I guess he wasn’t, you know, on top of his shit then either at that point in time. He was still kind of maybe messed up in the game.” He had apparently accompanied Bobbito Garcia to the video shoot. After waking him up, Jus spoke to him briefly, reminding him of the last time they had met. The significance of such strange synchronicities—bumping into each other in the least likely of places—would eventually come into focus for both of them.
Fiona Bloom, a British transplant who attended college in Georgia, had worked in the music industry since 1994, when she conducted the marketing campaign for Gang Starr’s fourth album, Hard to Earn (Chrysalis/EMI, 1994). Though hip-hop was her passion, as a white woman, she was finding it difficult to be taken seriously. She ended up as director of media relations at an indie rock label called Zero Hour Records. After paying her dues there, she caught a break in 1998, helping to broker a multimillion-dollar deal between Zero Hour and her former employer, EMI. As thanks, her boss gave her her own hip-hop imprint, which she called 3-2-1 Records.
Her debut release through the new label was a compilation of hip-hop and dub called Connected (1998). Featuring an eclectic assortment of artists—including Kool Keith, Cokni O’Dire, The Angel, and Blackalicious—the album received a decent amount of press thanks to her efforts. The Oakland-based Blackalicious, who were signed to Mo’ Wax in the UK but practically unknown in the US, were so impressed that they asked to be signed, and she was only too happy to indulge. The following year, she also signed Rubberoom out of Chicago and Bigg Jus, fresh from his split with Company Flow. He also convinced her to sign Brooklyn’s Skeme Team and Scienz of Life from New Jersey, before eventually becoming an A&R rep for the new label.
Everything seemed to be going well, until the mother company, Zero Hour, went bust in June 1999. Bloom found herself in a catastrophic situation, suddenly owing money to multiple artists, as well as unpaid bills for mastering and manufacturing. It was a stressful time for her, illustrating how unpredictable and merciless the music industry could be. Thankfully, her friend Alan Ket, editor of Stress magazine, referred her to a possible investor, who might be able to save the day.
Peter Lupoff of Lehman Brothers, a former musician himself, was looking to leave Wall Street and get into the music business. In 1998, he had already formed a company with producer Nile Rodgers and another partner called RRL Entertainment to invest in entertainment industry properties and projects. Ket arranged a meeting, according to Bloom, “And I ended up bringing Bigg Jus as my partner, because I didn’t wanna be a white chick with another white guy starting a hip-hop label. I wanted to do this right.”
Lupoff, apparently, had the same intentions. Already attracted to independent hip-hop through the work Rawkus was doing, he felt he could do it better. “Maybe we can tease out some new models with the internet coming on and Napster, like let’s just embrace that and find some clever way,” he said. “Let’s find a new model to give artists ownership in their masters and maybe ownership in the label so that they are partners for real.” Following a week of further talks between the three principles, Sub Verse Music was founded.
“Like he [Jus] and I conceived of the idea of the name Sub Verse together—‘sub’ [meaning] below, ‘verse’ [meaning] spoken word as a way of talking about underground. And we got launched,” says Lupoff. “If Jus is our partner on creative, Fiona’s sort of outward facing, and I’ll just deal with, you know, the operational business finance. I didn’t really intend to be that involved. I had to get really involved because the music industry went into the shitter, but that wasn’t the intention.”
But even before the industry apocalypse, Lupoff was fully committed to the success of this new enterprise. His personal investment paid off the former 3-2-1 artists monies they were owed in exchange for delivery of an album master. Then, with seven masters under his belt, he was able to approach the EMI subsidiary Caroline for a manufacturing and distribution deal, netting an advance of $250,000. Using those funds, he was able to secure office space at a converted office furniture warehouse in lower Manhattan on Washington and Vestry Streets, subletting the bulk of it for additional income. By late 1999, Sub Verse Music was on the map and ready to unleash a trove of releases from Blackalicious, Bigg Jus, Rubberoom, Micranots (from Minneapolis), and Scienz of Life.
Though the independent hip-hop scene of the late nineties was gradually expanding, it still represented a niche market. From Plainfield, New Jersey, the crew Scienz of Life, composed of John Robinson (aka Lil’ Sci); his brother Michael (aka ID 4 Windz), the group’s producer; and Inspector Willabee (Rashan Coleman), already called themselves friends and neighbors of Bigg Jus. They also knew Bobbito Garcia from the radio show and his live nights at the Nuyorican. In fact, at one of those nights, Robinson passed him a cassette demo to play on the air and was pleasantly surprised a couple weeks later when he found a message from Garcia on his answering machine. The host/label owner was interested in releasing a twelve-inch of their song “Powers of Nine Ether,” which led to a handshake deal on Fondle ’Em. The group would often meet Garcia at Footworks to handle business, and once when they came in, he informed them that they had just missed DOOM. They were so hyped, Robison recalls, “We run out, catch up to DOOM up the block, and we’re literally able to just meet him quickly as he’s getting into a cab and just let him know who we are and, you know, let him know we’re not crazy. We work with the same label, with Bob, da, da da.”
Their next encounter with DOOM occurred a couple years later in 1999, when they drove down to Atlanta with Bigg Jus to perform their first show there. “We get to the sound check at the venue MJQ and DOOM is outside, you know, maskless, no mask, none of that. Like, yo, what up?” says Robinson. Since he and Jus already knew each other, they kicked it for a bit, but DOOM didn’t even stay for the show. But the group’s inaugural trip down south made a serious impression on them. “It was really our first time in Atlanta to get introduced to the underground scene in ATL,” says Robinson, “It was, like, really powerful. We realized, oh wow, this is like a melting pot of artists from all over the country here, just doing different styles and things, but all in the name of hip hop.” They realized then that New York, or even LA, could no longer claim to be the center of the hip-hop universe.
Back in New Jersey, Jus was feeling restless. “Something was telling me to get the fuck up out the city,” he says. “And I didn’t know what it was, but because of my upbringing and stuff like that, I got like strong intuition about things.” According to Robinson, “Bigg Jus who I consider a very quiet, super innovator to this day—when Bigg Jus speaks about things that sounds crazy that means listen, cuz that shit’s definitely gonna happen in some capacity.”
With Sub Verse on the verge of starting up, he talked to them about opening a satellite office in Atlanta, where they would work for the label making calls and deliveries to retail in exchange for their living expenses. “So, when you’re calling to talk about your record, you’re asking about Micranots and Rubberoom and the other artists. When you’re moving about on tour, doing retail runs, going into the record stores, or doing an in-store, you’re asking about the other records in the retail scapes and blah, blah, blah, really learning the game hands on,” says Robinson. “But also, like having rent paid, having a gas card and a van and, you know, just all these things to kind of keep the machine going.” As working artists, committed to growing their careers, such considerations made a lot of sense to them—especially since a new wave of gentrification was making the New York area a prohibitively expensive place to live.
Throwing in their lot together in 2000, Scienz of Life and Bigg Jus piled their lives into a moving van and drove down from the apartment complex where they both lived in Harbortown, New Jersey, to a converted cotton mill/loft complex in Newnan, Georgia, about forty miles southwest of Atlanta. DOOM had already relocated earlier that year, renting a townhouse with his wife Jasmine in Woodstock, which was about thirty-six miles northwest of the city. “He was one of the few people I knew down there,” says Jus, who had attended military school in Georgia. “He was kind of like my barbecue buddy, basically, in Atlanta.” Though they lived an hour apart, the two would occasionally hang out. “So, he would come to my spot and do recording and stuff and I’d go to his spot and hang out,” Jus recalls. In speaking, DOOM strongly believed that Operation: Doomsday had more mileage, and Jus says, “I remember trying to organize a deal in Atlanta, you know, talking with him at one of these barbecues.”
At the same time, Scienz of Life, who had practically set up a hip-hop bootcamp in the 3,500-square-foot loft where their five-man crew lived, worked, rehearsed, and exercised together, were just getting to know the Villain. “DOOM would come check us at the loft space there, bring the MPC, sometimes work on beats there,” says Robinson. “And then we really just started connecting more on, I would say spirituality, really, like, you know, just talking about different books, whether it was Dr. York’s books or whether it was, you know, some other spiritual leader. We connected on that tip a lot. I felt like that was the glue, you know, that was the brotherhood. The music was there too, but I felt like at the time the building sessions were about just the world and what was going on and how to prepare yourself, how to be in tune, how to stay in tune and plugged in to the right information.” He adds, “That was a big part, I feel, of DOOM’s m.o. to not be so public and, you know, open and always accessible.”
“So, it’s probably late 1999, early two thousands. I’m having regular conversations with Bobbito about any number of things we might do,” says Lupoff. “And at one point he says to me, ‘You know, Operation: Doomsday, you should think about taking this up because I’ve done everything I can do with it. I put it out on vinyl on Fondle ’Em and I don’t know that there’s more to get done, but, you know, DOOM is sort of back on track. He’s anxious to kind of get going again and you’re the right aesthetic and you all could work this out.’
“And while that was happening,” Lupoff adds, “I think simultaneously the artists in the Atlanta area were also working with him and getting to know him better—Jus and the Scienz of Life. And, so, I think DOOM was getting comfortable that there was like a simpatico here and that he would be safe working with us because he’s hearing it from Bobbito, he’s hearing it from people in Atlanta.” After meeting with DOOM personally at the Sub Verse offices in 2000, Lupoff began to discuss the details of a deal.
“And we got to a place where we agreed to an advance and where, you know, the master reverted back to him at the end of a short period of time, I think it was like five years or four years, which was kind of our way, you know. It just sort of felt, like, equitable,” he says. “And then almost as an afterthought, he’s like, ‘Well, if you’re gonna take Operation: Doomsday, you want Black Bastards too?’ It’s like, absolutely, we’ll put that out. And, so, I forget what the economics was. I forget what the dollar amount was. It might have been 15 or 20 grand for Doomsday. And I think he said, ‘Well, how about the same for Black Bastards?’ I said, fine.”
The universe was slowly opening doors for DOOM. In November 2000, only weeks after signing with Sub Verse, he had the opportunity to shoot his first music videos for the songs “?” and “Dead Bent.” Though essentially no-budget videos made by then NYU film student Adam Bhala Lough (aka Piston Honda), he still had to buy the rapper a new pair of Timberland boots and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s to ensure his participation (for which the label eventually reimbursed him). But these simple, unpolished productions, which find DOOM wearing the first, plastic version of mask, perfectly complemented the rawness of the music, further contributing to the burgeoning cult of DOOM.
A hip-hop fan from Virginia, Lough had ostensibly come to New York for film school, but spent much of his time frequenting Fat Beats and venues like the Nuyorican, where he could experience the music he loved. He had discovered DOOM through the Fondle ’Em release of Operation: Doomsday, an album that he describes as “unpolished” but “weirdly addictive,” adding, “I’d never heard anything like it.” When the opportunity arose to see DOOM performing live at the Knitting Factory, on a bill featuring Minneapolis duo Atmosphere and Chuck D’s rock band, Concentration Camp, he made sure to attend. He watched from the balcony, along with a wheelchair-bound MF Grimm, as the audience of fifty or so flocked to the front of the stage to see DOOM. Though the rapper disappeared immediately after his performance, as he was prone to do, Lough was able to meet a guy named DJ Fisher, who called himself DOOM’s manager, and pitch him on making a free video. After exchanging numbers, Fisher told the young film student he would speak to DOOM and get back to him.
Though Lough had never shot a music video, DOOM requested some samples of his work, so he sent him a VHS of experimental shorts that he had made for a class. Afterward, they spoke by phone and finally met in person at the Sub Verse offices a couple weeks later. Lough had initially pitched doing videos for “Red and Gold” and “Hey!,” but DOOM wanted to do “?” so they scheduled the shoot for the weekend of November 18th when he would be back in town.
It was an unseasonably warm day in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park when they reconvened. Although the call time was set for seven in the morning, DOOM didn’t arrive until midday, insisting that they stop at the Foot Locker on Fourteenth Street for a new pair of Tims, which pushed their starting time back even further. When they finally arrived in Brooklyn, Kurious and one of his buddies were already waiting. Before shooting commenced, DOOM passed around the bottle of Jack that Lough had purchased the night before. With only a few hours of light left, a skeleton crew that included Lough, his friend Ethan Higbee, and cinematographer Ben Rekhi managed to capture most of the footage they needed for the simple and straightforward video.
Shot on film with an ARRI-S 16mm camera, DOOM rhymed—with and without the mask (though his face was obscured)—on a brownstone stoop and park bench. They also shot Kurious walking down the street while reciting his verse, and the two of them playing chess in the park. DOOM happened to bring Sub’s machete, which figures prominently as a prop as does the bottle of Jack. It’s not hard to notice the World Trade Center towering in the background as well. After finishing up for the day, they planned to continue shooting the next day at Lough’s apartment in the East Village at 205 First Avenue.
As the director went out to pick up more film the following morning, he was listening to Operation: Doomsday on his headphones for the umpteenth time. Suddenly, he was seized by an inspiration to do another video for “Dead Bent,” a stream-of-consciousness song with no hooks. Lough envisioned DOOM rhyming while getting up and going to the corner bodega, where he steals a bunch of produce. He would shoot it in one continuous take, but twice, with DOOM re-creating all his actions in reverse. Then they would present both takes side by side in a split screen. Arriving a few hours late, once again, DOOM seemed partial to the idea. So, after completing the shots they needed for the “?” video, they ran through several takes of “Dead Bent.” Everything proceeded without incident until the cameraman, Rehki, accidentally sat on the mask, which had been left on the couch, squashing it. Understandably, DOOM was not amused, and he abruptly ended the shoot.
With footage for two videos in the can, however, Lough had his work cut out for him, and spent the next few months in the editing room. After cutting in photos of Subroc and clips from an episode of the Fantastic Four cartoon, he sent copies to DOOM and Garcia, getting good feedback from them. A self-conscious DOOM wanted to cut out a shot that revealed his bald spot, but Lough kept it in, anyway. He turned over the finished copies to Sub Verse, who were able to get the videos aired on MTV Europe.
The whole experience left an indelible impression on Lough, who later wrote about it, saying, “Throughout the four or five months working with him, DOOM came across to me as a genius, undoubtedly brilliant, slightly nerdy, but also dodgy, capricious, and an unapologetic hustler. He smiled a lot, laughed a lot, drank a lot, and was warm and open in social situations. He’d trust you with certain details from his life, yet not trust you by a damn sight with other things.”9 That was the last he saw of the complex and enigmatic rapper until the following summer when DOOM was performing a show at S.O.B.’s.
Fiona Bloom describes DOOM’s August 15, 2001, appearance at the well-known downtown venue as “the most infamous S.O.B.’s show ever.” According to her, “If you talk to the owner of S.O.B.’s, Larry Gold, he says, still to this day, people ask him about that show.” Months after his Sub Verse release, with his star on the rise, DOOM sold out the 450-capacity club on a Wednesday night. When showtime arrived, he trooped onstage backed up by some of the Monsta Island Czars with Bigg Jus as his deejay. The excitement in the crowd was palpable.
Bloom says, “He had a good, or I should say, a warped sense of humor, you know. He was a funny, crazy guy, a disturbed guy, sweet guy, sweetheart, teddy bear at the end of the day, not a scary guy at all, you know, a lovely guy, but he liked to get things wild up, and yeah, so he staged this fight.” Though she witnessed it all, buried in the crowd, like most people who were there, she still was not sure exactly how and what actually transpired.
“From what I remember DOOM was doing his set and then he was bringing Megalon,” says Jus, who had a better vantage point, being onstage himself. “S.O.B.’s is not really a big stage or whatever, but he was walking back and forth, and he walked toward Megalon and pushed him, I think, playfully. But Megalon kind of got embarrassed and just jumped on DOOM and pummeled him real quick.” DOOM’s gold fronts went flying into the crowd. Somewhat taken aback, he jumped off stage to escape, and one of his Timberlands slipped off. He ended up fleeing the club wearing one boot with Megalon giving chase. Meanwhile, according to Jus, “The whole crowd is stunned and don’t know what’s happening.”
Chaos ensued. “There was like blood everywhere, and people thought that somebody was killed, or hurt,” says Bloom, “And next thing you know, everybody’s bum rushing to the door and lights are on and the show had stopped, and people were freaking out and screaming and everything was a blur.” People were running out of the club to see what happened.
Jus ran out to see about DOOM and found the rapper pacing back and forth down the block, looking frazzled. “DOOM was like, hella embarrassed. Like he was like, ‘What just happened?’ And I just told him like, ‘Yo, just say the shit was staged,’ ” he says. “And then he kind of gathered himself, came back in and acted like the shit was staged. But no, it was not staged from the start.” Upon returning to the club, somebody gave him back his gold fronts, and he was able to retrieve his Timberland as well. Says Jus, “That’s how the show ended. It was kind of brilliant.” According to Bloom, “All I can remember was it was like one of the most historic, crazy experiences I’d ever encountered. And everyone said the same thing.”
If Fondle ’Em put DOOM back on the map, Sub Verse spread his name far and wide, greatly expanding his cachet as an artist. Despite their modest investment in licensing the two records, the label was determined to get the most bang for their buck, releasing a remastered Operation: Doomsday (with a bonus track, “I Hear Voices”) in May 2001 and Black Bastards, with its original, controversial cover art, only a month later. Bloom, who handled marketing and promotion, capitalized on the story of DOOM’s redemption after losing his brother and his major label deal, which hip-hop centric publications like Ego Trip, Stress, and Mass Appeal found irresistible. But her Rolodex was deep, and she was also able to get him coverage in such national outlets as the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, High Times, Rolling Stone, and Spin. Thanks to the press bonanza, a flurry of ads taken out by the label, and their wide distribution channels that stretched around the globe, they were able to register some decent sales. According to Lupoff, “In the time that we were tracking it, we probably moved 75,000–80,0000 of Doomsday and maybe 65 to 70 [thousand] of KMD. They were pretty close for a couple of years.” But beyond the impressive numbers, their marketing and promotion campaign firmly placed DOOM back in the public eye.
Far from dealing with a faceless corporation, DOOM was treated like family by Sub Verse and took full advantage of it. “So absolutely DOOM would ask for a lot of stuff and we gave him everything—pretty much everything he asked for—whether it was wardrobe, recording equipment, microphones, you know metal face mask, weed. We got it for him,” says Bloom. When DOOM’s plastic mask was wrecked during the “Dead Bent” video shoot, Lupoff paid Lethem the $300 it took to purchase and refit the steel mask from Gladiator that became DOOM’s defining feature. DOOM might even have done another record for Sub Verse if not for one simple reason. According to Bloom, “We were having major success and DOOM was very happy. Everybody was very happy. But then, just remember where we are, Washington Street in Tribeca, right? 2001, right? 9/11 happened.”