In 1997, a bizarre man wearing a gladiator-style mask began rapping at open mic nights all over Manhattan. He called himself Metal Face DOOM and people never saw his face or learned his real name.
Hip-hop is obsessed with authenticity and narrative. Rappers broadcast their hometowns, reflect on their rise from poverty and emphasize their allegiance to the streets in spite of newfound wealth.
Metal Face DOOM’s mask and unexplained arrival seemed to reject a tradition of being real and telling a story.
It soon leaked that the mysterious rapper was Daniel Dumile, who had found moderate success in the early ‘90s rapping with his brother in a group called Kausing Much Damage. However, his brother died in a car accident in 1993, and his group’s record label dropped them that same week. Dumile spent four years drunk and homeless.
He returned as Metal Face DOOM, a disfigured super villain determined to exact revenge on the rap industry. As he explained in his 2003 song “Beef Rapp,” “He wears a mask just to cover the raw flesh/A rather ugly brother with flows that’s gorgeous.”
While his flows were gorgeous, what drew attention were Dumile’s unconventional beats. He produced his own tracks, cutting R&B tunes with ‘60s cartoon samples to build a villainous persona based on the Fantastic Four character Doctor Doom.
Dumile’s inventive use of sampling to tell a real story of pain and redemption turns out to fall in line with the hip-hop canon.
Many genres of music tell stories and insist on being genuine. But hip-hop’s culture of sampling and referencing older work shows that the originality needed for an interesting story comes from connecting old ideas rather than conjuring new ones.
Very little imaginative music finds as much mainstream success as Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 platinum record “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City.” It is a concept album, using voicemail messages, skits and songs to follow a 17-year-old Lamar — the good kid — as he navigates the streets of Compton.
The album begins with him borrowing his mother’s minivan for a rendezvous with a female friend: “I had a fifth in the trunk like Curtis Jackson for ransom/I’m hoping to get her loose like an Uncle Luke anthem.”
The hip-hop conscious listener recognizes “fifth” sounds like “fif’,” another nickname for Curtis Jackson, or 50 Cent. The listener also recalls that Uncle Luke was a member of 2 Live Crew, a group famous for the song “Me So Horny.”
Rather than saying “I had alcohol and wanted sex,” Lamar uses references to older work to build new images and connections that engage the listener.
The album and the story continue, packed with references to hip-hop and black culture: a free-style session in the backseat of a car where he proclaims “Martin had a dream/Kendrick have a dream.” An unscrupulous peer suggesting he dive into a metaphorical liquor-filled swimming pool, reminiscent of Snoop Dogg in “Gin and Juice.” Friends “bumping Jeezy’s first album” while “hotboxing like George Foreman grilling.” Ultimately, Lamar finds salvation in the form of his neighbor, played by Maya Angelou, praying for him to find peace in a mad city.
“Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City” shows a level of originality in its story-telling that comes once in a generation. However, like Dumile’s samples, Lamar’s originality comes not from inventing new ideas whole cloth, but by finding creative connections between old ones.
All music builds on itself, but only hip-hop explicitly acknowledges that crafting genius out of nothing is impossible. By constantly paying homage and pointing listeners toward influences, rappers show that ideas are not stolen, but repurposed and reintroduced.
Dumile’s beats and Lamar’s references show that the best stories draw from a broader context. A closer look at any seemingly novel idea reveals originality to be a mirage — a vortex of countless influences. Rather than running away from this reality, hip-hop cites its sources.
Danny Bugingo can be reached at [email protected]