I just saw Kurt Vile shout-out to Czarface's absolutely brilliant hip-hop album Super What?:

Earlier this year, Vile spoke with The Quietus about the album:

I didn’t know what to expect from this record. I bought it when I was on the road. I listened to it on a ferry on a Discman, leaving the UK, headed to Europe. The music behind it is really good, but then the rest of it is insane and makes me laugh, and it’s just the perfect intro. It just explodes into my headphones and into my brain, and I’ve never been the same. That’s one of my favourite modern tracks as well.

The video is better than the Quietus thing; Vile is obviously deeply into hip-hop and he loves music. By the way, Vile's latest album is really fucking playful and good. He's always creating good music. Go, Kurt Vile!

Czarface is a great collaboration. Imagine hip-hop at its most playful, groovy, and funky, and you're down. Everything Czarface release is truly great, no exaggeration. Everything from the comic-book examples... It's not weird that MF DOOM collaborated with Czarface. I mean, check out this album. It's actually the first posthumous release from MF DOOM after his death.

This album is SO much fun. Darryl from RUN-DMC is in here. Del Tha Funkee Homosapien is here. There's so much to love here. Simple and flash lyrics, references to everything from throwaway riddims like 'dem girls like sugaaaaah' to the laughter at the start of the first track.

I fucking love musicians that don't take themselves too seriously. Make no mistake, this is not sloppy in any sense; this is music by people who know what the hell they're doing and have the chops to take in influences, fun, chaos, chance, and severely addictive rhymes and beats from everywhere.

I fucking love hip-hop and this album is a great example of why everyone should get deeply into this.

This album reminds me of Deltron 3030's eponymous great album...

#music #MusicTips #Czarface #MFDOOM #HipHop

Amid the colorful cast of characters and personas who have distinguished themselves in rap—from Rammellzee to Kool Keith, Ol’ Dirty Bastard to Busta Rhymes—DOOM shines as another true original. When asked about the best advice he had ever received, he replied, “A wise man once said, ‘Do you.’ I know what he meant, but I didn’t really grasp what he said until maybe a year later. And that was like the wisest statement I heard out of any book or anything I ever read: ‘Do You.’ Be yourself and that’s the best thing you could be. Anytime you try to copy someone you’re not being genuine to yourself.”11 In the same interview he added, “I’m constantly striving for perfection, so what I’m doin’ is constantly elevatin’ and educatin’ myself in a way that, all right, I’m better than I was the previous day. Yunno, so, that could go on forever, there’s really not ever going to be a top, you know? I don’t think I’ll do it in this lifetime.”

The quote is from The Chronicles of DOOM by S. H. Fernando Jr.

Earlier this year, the BBC published a four-part podcast series on MF DOOM. DOOM is often referred to as 'your favourite rapper's favourite rapper', and there's something to that statement.

Two of my favourite DOOM albums are MM..FOOD and Madvillainy. Listen to either of those and you can't go wrong. There's something about the playfulmess (I accidentally wrote the 'm' but I'll let it be because it works) of that album that says a lot on how DOOM used comics, epic stories, souped-up samples, farce humour, and tricky words, not to mention sentence construction. DOOM is a legend in hip-hop and he was a legend while he was alive.

I mean:

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.

To destroy rap.

Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself.

That's Charles Bukowski.

I mean:

Inspired by their futuristic beats, DOOM could focus on his writing, stepping up his pen game. “Viktor the director, flip a script like Rob Reiner,” he says on the title track, capping it with the punchline, “The way a lot of dudes rhyme, their name should be knob shiner.”

Yeah:

In the canon of DOOM, Madvillainy, far and away, ranks as his magnum opus—an album that transformed a hungry underground upstart, struggling for a second chance, into a serious contender. As seldom as critical and popular tastes overlap, the stars were definitely aligned for this one, as the overwhelmingly glowing response greeting its March 2004 release suggested. Pitchfork called it “inexhaustibly brilliant,” adding, “Good luck finding a better hip-hop album this year, mainstream, indie, or otherwise.” The Village Voice hailed “an outlandishly imaginative collaboration.” Already divining the future, the site Hip-Hop DX said, “Classic albums generally need some time to marinate and gain that status, but fuck it; they didn’t follow any guidelines so why should I? Classic. Yes, I said it. Classic.” They were even dazzled across the pond. “The wily creativity on display here is astonishing,” marveled Mojo, while Q magazine simply called it “one utterly badass album.”

Bandcamp offer a guide to the MF DOOM discography.

DOOM lives in all of us; we all live in DOOM.

#music #MFDOOM #RecordClub