MF Doom

Straight out of the shadows of the concrete metropolis is rap’s most revered super villain, Doom a.k.a. MF Doom. The masked lyricist, known to possess a variety of super powers, including genius level intellect and multi-syllable rhyming, has single headedly put fear in the eye of many of his peers, and dominated the underground for close to 20 years.

The secret identity of the man behind the mask is Daniel Dumile, a New York native with a passion for hip hop, storytelling, comic books and sci-fi. Throughout his extensive career he has been known by many other aliases, including King Geedorah, Metal Face, Metal Fingers, Viktor Vaughn, and Zev Love X.

As Zev Love X, he formed the group KMD in 1988 with his younger brother DJ Subroc and Onyx the Birthstone Kid. KMD's recorded debut came on 3rd Bass's song "The Gas Face", followed in 1991 with KMD's album Mr. Hood. Sadly, Subroc was struck and killed by a car in 1993, while attempting to cross a Long Island expressway before the release of a second KMD album, titled Black Bastards. The group was subsequently dropped from Elektra Records that same week.

With the loss of his brother, Dumile retreated from the hip-hop scene from 1994 to 1997. He testifies to disillusionment and depression, living "damn near homeless, walking the streets of Manhattan, sleeping on benches." According to interviews with Doom, he was also "recovering from his wounds" and swearing revenge "against the industry that so badly deformed him." Black Bastards had become bootlegged at the time, leading to Doom's rise in the underground hip-hop world.

Since that unfortunate time period, he has taken his revenge on the industry through numerous successful releases including his solo albums as Doom, Viktor Vaughn, and King Geedorah. He has also been a part of a few very successful collaborations including Madvillain (with Madlib), Danger Doom (with Danger Mouse), and Sniperlite (aka Dilla Ghost Doom, with J Dilla and Ghostface Killah).

During his career he has also joined forces with other big name artists, including De La Soul, Rza, Talib Kweli, Prince Paul, Vast Aire, Peanut Butter Wolf, MF Grimm, OhNo and many more.

Over the last few years it is speculated that Doom commissioned a handful of imposters to perform in his place at various North American shows. Although there has been no confirmation of this, one can guess that it may be true due to the fact that it keeps in line with the story of Dr Doom’s comic books. A frequent plot device in those comics was to reveal, at a story's end, that the heroes were actually fighting one of Doom's many robot doubles, either working on his behalf, or a Doombot gone rogue impersonating him.