"He rhymes as weird as I feel": Your Favorite Rappers on MF DOOM

Read what rappers like Mos Def, Earl Sweatshirt, Brother Ali, and Danny Brown have said about MF DOOM.

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Image via MF Doom

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By Brian Josephs

Almost by design, Madvillainy is the stuff critics and anti-commercial backpackers' dreams are made of. It's track after track, bar after bar, of witticisms, punchlines, and English language mastery waxed over some the dustiest, funkiest beats the darker corners of hip-hop nation has ever seen.

Even as tens of thousands of words seek to dissect its charm and dozens of repeats threaten to dull its appeal, Madlib and MF DOOM’s album always manages to inexplicably remain fresh. It's abstract, it's vivid, but at its core, it's a hip-hop album, and that's something many artists of the genre have taken note of. There have been artists paying homage to the blueprint and artists who try to expand on the new realms the duo effortlessly explored. Whatever their inspiration, rappers' viewpoints on hip-hop's most famous villain almost always come from a place of respect. Here's what other artists have said about the legendary DOOM.

Mos Def

He rhymes as weird as I feel. When I saw that Madvillain record, I bought it on vinyl, and I didn’t even have a record player. I bought it just to stare at the album. I stared at it and I just kept going, "I understand it." Cause you know I was a teenager growing up listening to [John Coltrane’s] Love Supreme and [Miles Davis’] Bitches Brew and [Charles Mingus’] The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, but I was also rhyming.

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Earl Sweatshirt

I based a lot of the ways that I was trying to rap off of his shit when I was learning how to do it, so it was crazy meeting him. Especially since he's such an elusive person.

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Ghostface KIllah

[Favorite thing] about DOOM? He can rhyme, he just got a good ear for music and he can rhyme well too. He’s a great artist. He’s like me in a way, very creative. I like creative people.

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Jay Electronica

Somebody tell MF DOOM let's make a fuckin album.

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Nas

I've also been wanting to get with MF DOOM; I don't know what that's gonna take, trying to get with him before the album is done. [DOOM and Jay Electronica] might be my favorite" - Nas speaking on Untitled, which featured Electronica but not MF DOOM)

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Prince Paul

I’ve known DOOM forever, and I like to think that we’re pretty cool. I used to always go on about how great he was, and people were like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' And all of a sudden he blows up and now it’s like, 'We hail the earth DOOM walks on,' and it’s just so funny to me. It’s just like, 'Wow, okay, I think I kind of mentioned that a while ago.' But it’s well deserved.

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Lupe Fiasco

The Artist whom I find greatly interesting and inspiring is MF DOOM.

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Brother Ali

That's the thing about him. He really can perform at a high level. So when he did that stuff that he did... and he did do it, I was there too when his mic wasn't connected to anything and there was lyrics coming out. I wasn't there when there was somebody else pretending to be DOOM. It's not that he's lazy and it's not that he can't perform. It's really that he wants it to be about the music to where anybody could be DOOM as long as the music is DOOM.

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Sadat X

KMD came up under us, they were a younger group and when they first came, they were under the beliefs of Dr. [Dwight] York, one of those type of teachings, and you know, just to see them [emerge] from that. Because when they first performed, they used to wear like the robes and everything, and it’s interesting just to see them come out of that and start to perform, and feel comfortable, and then to later branch off how DOOM has to create this whole entity thing that he has done. It’s a good thing.

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Danny Brown

I never knew you could make an entire album without hooks and have it sound that good. He broke the rules of songwriting. That album broke rules to me. I'm all about that. That album showed me that music has no rules. Before that I thought you needed 16 bars and hooks to make a good song. I listened to that album and it clicked. Then I could listen to his old shit and get it.

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Bishop Nehru

It’s an honor [to work with DOOM] honestly. I’m a huge fan of DOOM. He’s a cool dude; we went out to dinner and shit… I was in UK for the Wu-Tang tour and I met up with him and we just kicked it about the project and how we gotta go about it and stuff. Next time when I go out there… We’re going to go to the studio and stuff. Yeah he’s a cool dude.

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Peanut Butter Wolf (Stones Throw founder)

When MF DOOM did the album with us, he ended up recording some stuff in the bomb shelter, and he liked it so much that he always wanted to record everything there, even though he can go to big studios now. He loves the bomb shelter. We would get him a hotel, a real nice hotel in Beverly Hills, and he would stay over at our house and be recording in the bomb shelter, and he would just sleep on the floor. He's basically a humble person, still. He hasn't let his success change him in that way.

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