Here's a cruel twist of fate for you: A few years after catching hell for sending doppelgangers to take his place onstage as some weird conceptual fuck-around during a 2008 North American tour, DOOM spent 2010 touring in Europe as the genuine article-- and then got stranded there, reportedly on visa issues. Eventually, he went from stranded to extradited, left to make his home back in the London birthplace he hadn't lived in since he was a kid. Whether this is what really put a potential crimp in every possible latter-day planning-stages project from Madvillainy 2 to Swift and Changeable is up in the air, it seems almost beside the point in this context: He's also been isolated from his family, most of his friends, and a significant amount of his own personal agency. It'd almost be a plot-thickening chapter in his outsized four-color supervillain persona if the real-world implications weren't so disheartening.
But DOOM is nothing if not adaptable, and his sense of humor is always present, even when there's good reason to be disillusioned. So after tuning in to the liberating potential of his new homebase-- he recently told The Guardian that he's able to live freely "incognito," ironically more likely to be recognized with the mask than without-- he put together a fractured but widescreen picture of a cult icon in exile. Key to the Kuffs hits all of DOOM's angles, from the well-documented (wise-ass shit-talker) to the underrated (political agitator) to the overlooked (sentimental romantic). And with the co-billed producer angle-- JJ being Jneiro Jarel, the Danger to his Doom and the Mad to his Villain this time around-- there's the added potential to see this as another case of a collaboration providing a new facet to an already ambiguous public face.
Key to the Kuffs has a persona that's a lot harder to pinpoint than Madvillainy's blunted Jack Kirby surrealism or the adult-cartoon goofiness of The Mouse and the Mask. Not that there's a shortage of either; here you get bloodshot pulp crime atmosphere and "Regular Show" clips rubbing elbows in the album's first five minutes. But aside from the loose DOOM-in-England motif, there's not enough of an overarching theme that Jarel's serviceable-but-indistinct production can pull together. Not that cohesion's the most important thing to preserve-- it doesn't take a lot to "get" DOOM at this point, and the blend of big-idea tracks about things like communicable diseases or Frankenfoods mixed in with rapping-for-its-own-sake is comfortably accessible without being all that bland. And there's precedent for Jarel and DOOM working well together-- Shape of Broad Minds' Craft of the Lost Art highlight "Let's Go" attests to that.
Things have changed in the ensuing years, though, and Jarel's restless style has shifted from a psychedelic proto-Brainfeeder fellow traveler of Flying Lotus to something a bit more matter-of-fact on this record. For the majority of Key to the Kuffs, or at least the majority that DOOM has a verse or two, the beats glide along in an unobtrusive way that's more easily nodded at than nodded to. Some moments bump, like the hissing new wave funk of "Rhymin' Slang" and "Wash Your Hands" or the xylophone boom-bap of "Retarded Fren". Others approach a subtly off-kilter weirdness, like the bloated, drunk-sounding tuba that serves as the bassline to "Borin' Convo". But they're usually the least attention-getting aspects of any given track and, as typified by instrumental "Viberian Sun II", not especially interesting isolated from vocals or sound clips. Even the two widely touted guest-spot moments feel low-key: Damon Albarn's presence on "Bite the Thong" is pared down to the point of almost sounding subliminal, like a dub of a tunnel-bound cell phone call to an AM radio station 50 miles away, while Beth Gibbons' appearance on "GMO" is too smothered in bass to register as much more than an unintelligible phantom melody. Khujo Goodie's 88-second Willie Isz reunion "STILL KAPS" leaves more of an impact.
It's just as well that the beats don't overstep; every time DOOM's voice appears it takes over so authoritatively that, sloppy or on-point, the flow becomes more prominent than the beat he rides over. Sometimes it's borderline detrimental, like the first few (well, OK, several) bars of his hobbled-sprint double-time turn on "Banished" that seem to scramble over the beat without entirely gaining his footing-- which almost works, since the hyperventilating analog bass grumble is one of the few productions on the album that could be properly described as "filthy." And there are some signs of apparent rust or performances that sound like first takes-- he's so mush-mouthed on "Guv'nor" that a line where he says "splurge" sounds more like "splshurghs"-- that threaten to sabotage the plainspoken-yet-crafty wordplay and abrupt turns into tight-packed internal rhymes that usually makes his voice so first-bar immediate.
And yet he's no less quotable than he was in '99-- the same track that has him slurring the word "splurge" has him seamlessly integrating the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption into a punchline, for fuck's sake ("Catch a throatful from the fire vocal/ Ash and molten glass like Eyjafjallajökull"). He's still missile-silo deep with vocabulary, and when his voice backs him up, he's untouchable; there's a stretch in "Rhymin' Slang"-- "Rarely, scarcely, scary glaring stare/ Let's be very clear, MCs is derriere/ As well as aware, wearily, just don't be nearly near, you hear me? Yeah"-- that's tailor-made for dropped-jaw rewinds. The thematic tracks are heavy on the diabolical brainiac grifter guise that's fueled his post-KMD creativity for some 15 years, balancing knowledge and absurdity like a master. "GMO" pulls out the bioengineering terminology, wraps it in conspiracy-theory allusions, and makes it both scatologically funny and unnerving all at once. And there's rarely been a hip-hop track like "Wash Your Hands" that's gotten more creative mileage out of how germ-filled the human body can be ("You like the way she shake her back area/ It's like a sex machine that make bacteria"). But the loose theme of DOOM's UK exile really hits in the homesick, lovesick "Winter Blues", one of the most heartfelt tracks of DOOM's career in a way that's funny and affecting; his line about how "I need a handful of melanin/ Feelin' like the lamb's wool beard on your tender skin" is disarmingly touching from a man usually considered to be an outsized cartoon alter-ego. He may have found a new creative space in his birthplace, but it'll be a relief when he finally gets back to a place he can call home.
