Matt Haviland

“Living off borrowed time, the clock ticks faster” – so begins Madvillainy, an underground classic all about borrowing time. By time, I mean samples from old cartoons and beats from songs so ancient, it sounds like the loops are about to break apart.

The clock certainly flies.

MF DOOM, our rapper, wears a metal mask to his concerts. It might be for effect, to make him seem tough, or mysterious, or super… Or maybe he’s just hiding wrinkles. There’s no way around it, guys: DOOM sounds like an old man. He raps like he’s always on the verge of coughing, which turns a lot of people off. But listen to his words. “So nasty that it’s probably somewhat of a travesty, having me/ Then he told the people, you can call me your majesty,” spits MF over a rolling piano beat and trumpets lifted straight from some 70’s spy movie (“All Caps”). Those are some youthful linguistics.

Most of Madvillainy, if not absolutely all of it, is tongue in cheek, Saturday morning fun. MF delights in referring to himself in the third person, pretending to be a supervillain, and using oddly poetic, larger-than-life boasts (“When the smoke clears, you can see the sky again/ There will be the chopped off heads of leviathan”). He takes topics other rappers would soil with profanity and spits them with a childish lack of swears: “Daddy, the flow make her fanny shake/ Patty cake, patty cake.” While DOOM occasionally curses, it’s never anything bad, and only if it fits with his dazzling syntax.

This, in other words, is the most hardcore rap album that your ten year old brother is allowed to listen to.

With dusty production and gleeful bragging, Madvillainy is already worth cherishing. However, what sets it even further apart are the interludes. Only fourteen of the album’s twenty-two songs contain rapping; the rest are alarming instrumentals (“Do Not Fire!”), strange introductions to more legitimate tracks (“Bistro”), and Radiohead-esque experiments in sound (tell me “Shadows of Tomorrow” doesn’t remind you of “Push/Pulk Revolving Doors”). Even the songs where MF DOOM does rap feature, say, drumbeats falling away for classical violin interludes (“Strange Ways”). Or they might stop midway through for canned applause before starting up again (“Rhinestone Cowboy”). This is one of the the most inventive hip hop albums of all time, and it acts like an album: everything flows cohesively together, instead of so many random songs about gats.

Not to say there isn’t some classic rap style. DOOM frequently talks about gunplay, women, and drugs (the latter taking place in the head-nodding “America’s Most Blunted,” where he brags about his weed skills for an all-too-short minute; throwing out gems like, “DOOM nominated for the best rolled L’s, and they wondered how he dealt with stress so well”). There are also a couple of guest performers, which are as bizarre as DOOM (one of them being MC Chris, who you may know as MC Pee-Pants). And the beats, cut by producer Madlib from the funkiest, most bizarre 70’s music he could find, are worth listening to all by themselves.

What can I say? Madvillainy is nothing but fun. You should probably hear it as soon as possible, especially if you thought rap music began with glocks and ended with cash money. Hip hop can certainly, and just as compellingly, be about super heroes and, yes, supervillains.