MF DOOM - Operation: Doomsday

With his 1999 debut album, Operation: Doomsday, MF DOOM blurred the lines between present and past all the while delivering a masterpiece that molded an approach to rapping and producing that was suffused with memory. His vocals were slurred, almost dreamlike. In an era in which hip-hop was polishing its rough spots for mainstream acceptance, MF Doom was almost completely interior like he was rapping to himself. The music was intimately, almost quixotically, personal.

Sometimes on Operation: Doomsday, Doom rapped about death directly, and heavily. But, even when he didn’t, the clouds still hung low above him. Listening to the album was like standing outside in a summer rainstorm. You felt drenched, drained, gut punched, short of breath. The album served as a multilayered memorial - an act of grief for a lost loved one, a somber tribute to an approach to music that was becoming extinct, and an unassuming yet towering act of artistic recalcitrance.

Whether a classic archetype like Superman or a self-fashioned alter ego like Bobby Digital, embodying a comic-book figure holds a large appeal in hip-hop, an art form driven by mythology and boasting of superhuman capability. But Daniel Dumile might be the only rapper who based his persona on a supervillain whose origin story sounds uncannily like his own.

The album features the singles "Dead Bent", "Gas Drawls" and "Hey!"

Heavyweight double vinyl produced by Metal Face Records in 2023.

TRACKLISTING:

1. The Time We Faced Doom
2. Doomsday
3. Rhymes Like Dimes
4. The Finest (ft. Tommy Gunn)
5. Back in the Days
6. Go with the Flow
7. Tick, Tick... (ft. MF Grimm)
8. Red and Gold (ft. King Geedorah
9. The Hands of Doom
10. Who You Think I Am? (ft. X-Ray, Rodan, Megalon, K.D., King Geedorah, Kong)
11. Doom, Are You Awake?
12. Hey!
13. Operation: Greenbacks (ft. Megalon)
14. The Mic
15. The Mystery of Doom
16. Dead Bent
17. Gas Drawls
18. ? (ft. Kurious)
19. Hero vs. Villain (Epilogue) [ft. E. Mason]