Review Summary: Operation Doomsday: The beginning of the end of hip-hop or the jolt it needed to survive passed the 90's?
This album gets a 5 because it's a classic. I define classic as an original album with no bad songs coupled with at least several unforgettable tracks, so if your definition is different than mine, kindly accept my bias and read along. I always felt like DOOM was a supernatural force in hip hop for his ability to make killer beats and then slay them on the mic. I really believed (or believed at some point in the recent past) that he was a supervillian sent to this world to impact hip-hop music at the turn of the century. But even though this album is called Operation: Doomsday and he promised to destroy rap, he actually saves it, or at least benefited the genre greatly.
Most of my album reviews sound like history lessons, but hey, you need context to understand an album. Like most of the respected 90's rappers, he started rapping in the 80's, got a deal in the early 90's and went professional. He then gets kicked off his label over some nonsense (controversial album cover), and he and his brother Subroc hit rock bottom. Rap was all they had and they just got kicked off a metaphorical mountain. Living in homelessness and developing an alcohol addiction, his brother Subroc (who was the producer for DOOM's group KMD before the Elektra axe dropped) was fatally hit by a car. "It's always darkest before the dawn," never rung more true because Daniel Dumile was able to absorb his brother's original production style and create a persona that would be deeply respected (underground or not) for the at least the next 5 years.
The first song "Doomsday" sounds nothing like the name suggests. It has a beautiful mellowed-out beat followed with Doom's Kool G Rap-style unpredictable lyricism that always matched his raspy voice. He mentions that this isn't going to be over until he is with his brother again. Songs like "Rhymes like Dimes" (Did he mean women or money hmmm...) and "Hey" remind us that even though he lived a tragic life, MF Doom isn't a nihilist. In fact, he's pretty funny and and has a colorful vibe. "Rhymes like Dimes" is one of many displays of his skill while "Hey" has a Scooby-Doo sample in it that is very apparent, for Christ's sake. The album maintains the tempo of high quality rhymes to dope beats with the cypher song "Who You Think I Am?" which features not only Rodan, a machine-gun style rapper from Doom's KMD Days, but also Doom's alter-ego King Geedorah, who are both characters from Godzilla and Doom would later release an album as Geedorah. That's hilarious.
The album is chocked full of great songs and nerdy comic book skits that flow remarkably well. What this album did was mark the beginning of a highly respected emcee's second chance at glory. Whether you believe his best album was MM...Food, Madvillainy, The Mouse and the Mask, or Vaudeville Villain (my clear pick), this album is where it all started and there's a little bit of Doomsday in all of his works. Kind of like how there's a little bit of Subroc in all of Doom's work, or as Doom would later refer to him, Hip Hop's Hendrix. RIP.
