From the fire vocaled/Ash and molten glass like EyjafjallajöPOLL - ILM Artist Poll #108: MF DOOM. Voting til April 11.

True. It's been fun listening back to some deeper cuts and finding some new things, though my ballot's going to end up mainly the big releases.

i think this might've been the last song with a DOOM verse released during his lifetime? unless something else came out in 2020 that i'm forgetting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9QmBUBD-AI

The GTA V game update that has "The Chocolate Conquistadors" with Badbadnotgood and "Lunch Break" with Flying Lotus was in December, after his passing but before pretty much anyone knew.

The former was released as a single digitally but I guess the only place you can hear "Lunch Break" legitimately is driving around in the game (which is enough for me to take votes for it!). Here's someone's youtube upload:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ArmYP1nklI

thread name is changed. Thanks for the title, voodoo!

ill do my best to get a ballot together. wont have time to go back on a deep dive but i should have enough that i love to fill out a ballot.

deep dives definitely optional

ha yess, appreciate the title

i need to think on this a bit myself

Definitely going to vote in this, have just about got a shortlist together. Will lean very heavily on the main albums - have enjoyed going through those again.

maffew12 do you have a preference for how ballots are formatted i.e. just the track names or with the artist on there as well?

Doesn't matter. Just titles will be fine. I didn't put out a full list so I'll be wrangling things at counting time.

OK cool!

That Herbs Guide upthread is great. I should have sought more of these sample sources before now!

Also: are unranked track ballots are an option?

Weighted only, sorry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdyY20rGpJ8

I really need to make my list in the next couple days

Controps time? I don't normally mind hiphop album excesses, but most of the non-DOOM bits of Madvillainy drive me up a wall. It's weird cuz I can listen to Madlib all day. Going through all of the Mad/DOOM material for this ballot, I made a playlist of my faves... with a little of the Four Tet remixes too. Goes 56 minutes.

Avalanche (single)
Operation Lifesaver
Closer (off The Further Adventures of Lord Quas)
Bistro
Raid
Rainbows
Meat Grinder (Four Tet remix)
Supervillain Theme
Strange Ways
Fancy Clown
Butter King Jewels (off Madvillainy 2, uses DOOM vocal from Dabrye's "Air")
Monkey Suit (off Madvillainy 2, remix of "Monkey Suite")
Great Day Today
All Caps
Interlude (Koushik)
Victory Laps (Madvillainz Remix) (off DOOMSTARKS' Victory Laps single)
Boulder Holder (off Madvillainy 2, remix of "Money Folder")
Accordion
Shadows of Tomorrow
Figaro (demo/leak version)
Savage Beast instrumental (off Madvillainy 2)
Rhinestone Cowboy (Four Tet remix... which DOOM re-remixed and re-recorded the vocal for)
Curls
Knock Knock (off MED/Blu/Madlib Bad Neighbor album)
Papermill (single)

(See also "One Beer" and "Absolutely", perfect where they're at on DOOM's albums)

Madness! Madvillainy is the best one because it has the best skits. In fact it is one of the only hip hop records in the whole damn history of the genre where I can play it the whole way through.

BECAUSE of the skits? lolololol

I meant because of the whole listenability, which I presume is not a word. It’s rare for a hip hop record to flow so seamlessly, and the skits and instrumentals are a big part of that. Quas and VV turning up too

It might be the samples of the narrator that kill me. And Zappa. And "Hardcore Hustle". And "Eye" is far weaker than any of DOOM's own deep-cut "one for the ladies" tracks.

so speaking of..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MW4d-Cp19E

These fan-made cartoon videos are great. I thought this one had compiled all of the Mm Food ones out there, but nope.

Stahhr/Angelika still doing it btw! I love this one so much (on Born Like This and Stahhr's own Almost Neva Was)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qWUj_ZXNvU

trying to get a ballot together so i'm not influenced by the trickle of ballots coming into my email. Don't anyone forget the original DOOM ladies track, the man's best ever, Doomsday!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33gKblbeffM

Still people posting about "who is Pebbles the Invisible Girl?" when her only job on the record was to impersonate Sade and Barbara Weathers from Atlantic Starr (on "The MIC"). She does sound nice tho. I suspect it was just someone from the neighborhood, like Mr Fantastik. Hopefully they didn't also meet at a arms deal.

Vote!

So what does "there are no maximums" mean in practice for tracks? I'm guessing that a ranked list of all 576 (or whatever) appearances is not really what you had in mind, lol?

Any fans of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_to_the_Kuffs ? To me it feels like the last proper Doom album. I'll probably vote for 'Winter Blues' on the track list. We could live forever like Henrietta Lacks cells

xp Uh,well, OP might've been written on a couple shots and a few beers..but who cares. In practice, placements will be worth the same across all ballots, so if someone sends in hundreds of tracks, their last place will be 1 or 2 points, and on up from there. We could end up with pinball-looking scores. Here's hoping.

xp I think Kuffs could've been a great EP!

Way worse than I remembered: VV2
Way better than I remembered: DANGERDOOM (dump the CeeLo and Kweli tracks for anything from the EP or reissue and this really holds up... not that I can rank it like that exactly)

I remember VV2 being awful, unfortunately. I was so excited that Kool Keith as Dr Doom turning up too.

I actually really like the Cee Lo and Talib joints, makes me wish Doom did more with name artists over the years, I think he could have carved quite the niche for himself. He only ever really got to being like 16th on a gorillaz bill though, when it came to collabs. Rock Co Kane Flow is an obv sign he could have killed it.

Really need to sort a ballot out

I like those guys fine generally, but those two tracks, i dunno, yikes.

Apparently DOOM had a habit of turning down features that didn't come with a payday. At least it's something that came up a bunch of times in coverage this year. Wonder what he was charging some of these kids for features recently.

I've whittled my ballot down to 83 tracks. I'll keep going til the deadline.

I hadn't really paid much attention to JJ DOOM before last week. Often quite good, is my belated impression.

I'll be voting for "Bite the Thong" from JJ DOOM fairly high up. Awesome electro-style beat, with a typically abstract DOOM take on the machinations of the record industry, complete with EPMD references. Magnificent.

xp No need to whittle, can just rank

I used to have a friend when I was 16 and we used to go to Soho to buy records we couldn’t find in our small town. Getting the train back, I remember one of my first instances of annoying-white-guy-says-rap-lyrics about a 12” of Hoe Cakes. He was an indie / jazz type, and even that young he was mad into understanding what was going on deep in 1960s jazz, whether it was free or spiritual or whatever and had a distaste for fusion because people on the internet said that wasn’t real jazz. He hated rap he would hear on the radio.

After that, I tried not to talk to him about rap, there was too much other great music to not talk about something he didn’t like. That train journey always bugged me though cos Hoe Cakes is a fucking journey for anyone who loves both rap and everything weird or different in rap. In a different world, that sample could have been a hit. Instead it’s a deep cut.

A couple years later, when I hadn’t seen him for a while and we had grown a bit, I met him in the street and we ended up chatting for hours. All he could talk about was how much he loved indie rap, and Doom specifically, especially Madvillain, and all I could think was him reading the lyrics off the back of that 12.

Fucking love this shit. Need to make my ballot like yesterday

In which discussion did you guys cover the intricacies of "treat her like a daughter, taught her how to bust a nut"?

I got a copy of that 12 a few years ago on discogs. Every one of the listings didn't get the diner menu back sleeve design and was described like, "back is dirty and has a pricetag on it, otherwise great."

uh this album's the best one isn't it

just gonna vote and live with the regret

just got home for the day and determined to sort mine out,lol

Regardless of your top pick, how do people compare Food and Doomsday? I think Food is the absolute peak and yet.. Doomsday is the original/the return and has more moods..is just more than the sum of its parts.

side 4 of Madvillainy >>>>>> oxygen

Mm Food suffers for having like 10 skits in a row in the middle, makes me wanna skip half the record

It is a weird move. Easy to skip, though I usually don't. Bit of a rest between barrages of classics. What would drag it down for me is if the Paul Barman track (on the Leftovers EP) had made it on there! As it is, pretty much perfect. If you've got that original Kookies beat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhzavmxEzaY

Deadline tonight! I didn't say a timezone, but i won't be doing anything with them tonight, so by Monday 7AM Eastern let's say.

Trying to make my list now and errrr this is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’ve not even considered kmd yet

Should we maybe extend this? I said I’m doing the graphics for it and even I’ve not had time to vote. Ilx has seemed quiet for the past 2 weeks too, maybe we can hopefully get more folks involved with another weeks drive

Are weekends a bad time to end? Maybe Thursday night? Who else could use a bit more time?

I could get a ballot in by Thursday

Cool. I've heard from others too. We push on to Thursday night.. midnight Pacific. Thanks all.

I just saw this and 100% will vote – might need a day tho to marathon some albums.

oops – thursday is great thx!

Sorry, never voted in one of these things before. Do I have to email or can I just post my votes here?