MF DOOM

Metal Fingers Presents: Special Herbs, The Box Set Vol. 0 - 9

Genre: BEATS / HIP HOP

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Boomkat Product Review:

One of the most important hip-hop instrumental series' in existence, MF DOOM's "Special Herbs" collection lays out his enduring influence over ten volumes of East Coast grit, pitch-skewed jazz, psychedelic funk, and batshit yacht rock. Pure essential biz.

Daniel Dumile, better known as MF DOOM, Zev Love X, King Geedorah, or Viktor Vaughn, is quite rightly remembered as one of the most influential rapper-producers of the golden age - and someone whose comeback might have been even more pivotal than his charged OG run. "Special Herbs" was a short-lived but incalculably important series that emerged between 2001 and 2005, cataloging DOOM's peerless production skills and compiling beats he spread across a wide range of projects, or offered to other rappers like Masta Ace, MC Paul Barman, Ghostface, or Masta Killa.

Sampling material from Sade, Frank Zappa, Isaac Hayes, Art of Noise, The Doobie Brothers and countless others, and cutting it with TV snippets and videogame samples, DOOM set a 2000s cultural barometer that pretty much everyone in the game set as the gold standard ever since. It's hard to believe Earl Sweatshirt, Westside Gunn, Joey Bada$$, or even FlyLo would sound quite the same without his pivotal early works.

And although it might look like a mountain to climb (there's a LOT of material here, we ain't gonna lie) DOOM's inherent swing and light pace makes each chapter whizz by. It's like hearing someone rifle through their record collection, playing the best bits of each track before finding something else. Check out his classic reshaping of Sade's breathless 'Kiss of Life' on opening track 'Saffron', the beat that backed up his surrealist rhymes on 'Doomsday'. The original track's electric pianos and hand drums are used to couch manic cartoon clips, turntablism, and DOOM's signature 12-bit kick-snare snap that's still putting in work today. French disco don Cerrone has 'Rocket in the Pocket' distorted into a bouncy supervillain theme on 'Red #40', and the skeletal drums from Hall & Oates' 'I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)' are echoed off of the spooky "Dark Shadows" intro on 'Hyssop', a favorite from King Gheedorah's "Take Me To Your Leader" sessions.

There's far too much to go into, but if you've not got any of these volumes in yr collection and have any interest in sampling, East Coast hip-hop, disco, funk, plunderphonics, or whatever - it's time to get acquainted with a real one.

MP3 Release (82)