MF DOOM – Operation: Doomsday
morning folks! this week begins a brand new discography review – starting today we’ll be looking at the projects of MF DOOM, starting with Operation: Doomsday, released in 1999. let’s check it out!
gonna say right up front i LOVE the skits in this record. excellent sense of humor, highly thematic, and does a great job segmenting the record. this first skit, The Time We Faced Doom, has the opening dialogue leading into the Fantastic Four clip, with a loose connection in the interview that is the reason they tell the story. Doomsday has excellent grooves to it. Pebbles the Invisible Girl has a fantastic voice, and complements both DOOM and the mellow beat he’s rapping over. honestly the bit here that impresses me most is “of the fly brown 6-0 sicko psycho who throws his dick around”, like, the delivery if this line is so goddamn good. excellent track. Rhymes Like Dimes is probably my favorite track on the record. the groovey, electric, synth heavy beat he’s rapping over, combined with an excellent flow and a wild, off-kilter delivery makes this a fantastic listen. top line for me here is “only in America could you find a way to earn a healthy buck / and still keep your attitude on self-destruct”. plus the bit with the guest, DJ Cucumber Slice, at the end of the track us fun. The Finest is impressive – Tommy Gunn’s delivery is rapid fire, and DOOM here is floaty, drifting over the vaguely intimidating beat. good track. Back In the Days is a fun lil skit, nice how they make Mr. Fantastic a lil sinister here, fiddling with DOOM’s equipment. in the context of the show id imagine that interaction was supposed to be helpful but it feels meddling here, haha. Go With the Flow’s nice. very chill beat, and some fun lines here. the line about throwing MC to fire sticks with me for sure. Tick, Tick… is an extremely menacing track. the off-kilter delivery over the uneven beat is excellent. MF Grimm’s got a great delivery here too – my fave line here is “my mind is Heaven’s gate so enter me / my mind is the gate to Hell so try to flee”. Red and Gold feels like a nice autumn evening – extremely pleasant beat and some steady, measure delivery over top. nice track. The Hands of Doom (Skit) is a real bittersweet moment, im a big fan of what it brings to the kinda developing vibes here. Who Do You Think I Am? is a very cool group cut – each of the Monsta Island folks are putting in some great verses here. and yknow what? DOOM’s got great taste in Godzilla monsters. in Doom Are You Awake, its wild how much of a dick Reed Richards is. Hey! is a fun track. really enjoy the usage of the Scooby Doo samples here, and the Hey!s cutting in and sometimes interrupting the lines is very clever, haha. in Operation: Greenbacks, its incredible seeing all the threes references from the King Gheedra verses. The M.I.C. is a fun track – ill be honest the rap game as a girl metaphor missed me at first, but its a fun conceit. the last of the skits, The Mystery of Doom, has that fun transition where it jumps right from “let me explain” into a track where he explains, haha. Dead Bent is nice. i dont have a ton of thoughts on it. Gas Drawls has some dense fucking rhymes in it, jesus. incredibly smooth track. DOOM has made many references to his brother, Sub-Roc, who passed away a few years prior and who DOOM has been in a few groups with. ? is a nice track dedicated to the folks that passed before them, especially Sub-Roc. but like, this song’s still got humor in the ending, haha. a nice emotional ending to the record, with the Hero v.s. Villain Epilogue providing a bit of extra closure.
faves – Doomsday, Rhymes Like Dimes, Gas Drawls
dislikes –
damn this album kicks off SO WELL. i honestly respect artists putting their best tracks on an album back to back and Doomsday into Rhymes Like Dimes into The Finest is a fantastic chain of tracks. hell yeah.
and yknow what? i dont think it lost anything overall for being so front-loaded. the beats over the whole album are very fun, catchy, and ear-wormy, and DOOM and the guest vocalists carve some really quick and clean wordplay over them. very fun listen. lyrically, this record doesnt feel super deep, but i dont think it needs to be – the villain theming is perfect for track after track of bragging and laying down bonafides. the skits and samples here also do a great job of reinforcing that, giving life to the perspective of a “bad guy”, and creating a good cadence and structure to the record as the skits progress the story of DOOM.
on the topic of lyrics though, man there is some DENSE stuff in here – i brought up the “six-0 sicko psycho” line but thats not even uncommon on this record. would love to do a deeper dig into some of the more intricate stuff in the future.
very fun record.
Operation: Doomsday – 8/10
next up is the first record by DOOM’s Monster Island Czars persona, King Geedorah, 2003’s Take Me To Your Leader.
this is the beginning | next: Take Me To Your Leader
Discussion ¬