2020 started off pretty strong.

I converted my internship to a full time role. I was working my ass off because I wanted a deal under my belt, which I eventually did. I was working out, playing basketball and working at the local surf club on the weekends. I celebrated my 23rd Birthday and also started dating the girl I had a had a huge crush on for a while.

Life was going well. Then COVID hit. Then a month later I was diagnosed with Cancer.

That was July, and I had multiple Chemotherapy sessions during the rest of that year and didn’t know how many more will I need at the time. I couldn’t really go out (apart from hospital) because of COVID and couldn’t really meet anyone because my immunity was compromised. I couldn’t work effectively because I was recovering every other week. It was a bleak, hopeless time.

And I spent most of my chemo sessions (around 5 to 8 hours) listening to music.

Getting DOOMED

Around year before any of this, I had discovered MF DOOM. That was a genuinely new sound, nothing like anything I had heard before. I am a big fan of words, especially in poetry and song, and here was a man, who was at the absolute top of that game. This is also the first time I came across rhyme-in-rhymes.

Over time I started listening to more and more of DOOM’s music. And damn, DOOM does not miss, it was just banger after banger, and it just wasn’t the rhymes, the beats were ahead of their time too, a lot of which he made himself.

The first album I got into was MM..FOOD, which was inspired by fucking food of all things with tracks like ‘One Beer’, ‘Hoe Cakes’ and my favourite ‘Beef Rapp’.

Then it was one of the best hiphop albums of all time, Madvillainy as Madvillan- his collaboration with Madlib, one of the greatest hiphop producers, a venerable list that DOOM himself is part of (if you don’t believe me, go and listen to ‘Supervillain Theme’ from the same album).

I really don’t have the words to describe the art of this stature, and this isn’t hyperbole. The only way to understand what I mean would be to listen to it yourself, which is why I suggest you to go and do it ASAP.

Usually every albums have one or two songs I love and the rest are ‘nice’ at best. But that is not the case with Madvillainy. This whole album is dope start to finish. From ‘Accordion’ (first DOOM song I heard), to ‘Figaro’ to ‘Curls’ to the proclamation in ‘All Caps’ (“Just remember ALL CAPS when you spell the man name”) along with some head-bopping instrumentals in between such as ‘Supervillain Theme’ & ‘Sickfit’. Finally ending it with the very underrated ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ (“Known as the grimy limey, slimy—try me blimey; Simply smashing in a fashion that's timely; Madvillain dashing in a beat-rhyme crime spree”).

Other notable collaborations include ‘The Mouse & The Mark’ with Danger Mouse (as DANGERDOOM), ‘Czarface Meets Metal Face’ & _‘Super What?’ _with Czarface. I would be amiss if I didn’t ask you to some singles which are absolute masterpieces, specifically ‘Belize’ By Black Thought, Danger Mouse & DOOM and ‘’ with BADBADNOTGOOD

I was also fascinated by the man behind the mask. In my head, I saw him as a very chill individual who was always doing what he loved, day in and day out: spitting rhymes and mixing bangers, which would be pretty accurate looking at his enormous output over the years. It may not be accurate, but that was the image in my head of the man behind the mask.

He lived a rather difficult life. He started with the rap ground KMD with his younger brother, who died before their debut album could release. He completed the album but it was unreleased due to a controversial cover art and he was dropped from the label. DOOM spent over 3 years almost homeless in New York. He eventually created the masked MF DOOM persona while freestying at open-mics and eventually released_ ‘Operation: Doomsday’_ in 2000, his debut album. He enjoyed quite a bit of success after that, but his personal life was still rife with pain.

Back to 2020

Coming back probably the worst year of my life, there was finally some silver lining, it was ending.

The plan for December 31 was pretty much the same as most of the days of the year: I’d wake up and have a terrible time drinking my morning smoothie (a disgusting sludge made with milk, paneer, oats, almonds and banana), take a bath if I could and then start playing PS4. I was specifically playing Death Stranding at that time. The day went by pretty quickly with hours of gaming, talking to a few friends and a nap.

I went to bed around 1 AM and naturally opened Instagram on my phone. Then the first post I saw, sank my heart.

It was DOOM’s obituary, a brief, heartfelt letter written by his wife.

The world just suddenly sucked so much more right at that moment. Everything came back, from the diagnosis to the multiple chemotherapy sessions, the anxiety, loneliness, fear, pain and the worst of the all, the agony of uncertainty of survival. I cried as much as I could, which unfortunately like most men, is too little. It was a shit, shit year and it had to punch me in the stomach one last time before it would finally go away.

Every year as people celebrate the legacy of DOOM, I am reminded of that night, the pain and sadness when everything that was held up came flooding out with the death of a hero.

But I know that the world isn’t all that bad when I hear some rhymes like dimes.