The Chronicles of Doom: Unraveling Rap's Masked Iconoclast by S.H. Fernando Jr. 352 pgs. © 2024
This was a great introduction into a fascinating figure in modern hip hop. Doom was born Daniel Dumile and was the anti-rap performer--he didn't want notoriety, he didn't want to be recognized on the street or flash a bunch of cash and expensive cars everywhere he went. He grew up on a steady diet of cartoons and comic books and Japanese monster movies. His first music project with his brother Subroc was KMD in the late 80s/early 90s. When Subroc died young and the record label abandoned the group, Doom adopted his favorite comic book villain as his namesake and donned a eerily similar looking mask to that of Victor Von Doom, aka Doctor Doom from Marvel Comics. The mask gave Dumile anonymity but more importantly, it gave him a mysterious presence that was missing from the genre. Much of Doom's creative contributions to hip-hop include using old cartoon samples for his beats while rhyming in the third person. He played the villain for everything he could, even booking shows and having other people pretend to be him during the performances, infuriating promoters and concert goers alike, but his fan base never seemed to falter from hanging on his every word.
