Been getting queries about this newsletter lately, mostly about how MF DOOM entered the picture. Here’s some history: DOOM first made an appearance in a column of mine on Nov. 10 in TDN, “Taking Stock: Misbranding Case Doomed By Fed Error.” It starts off like this:
Expeditiously I be on my Grizzly
Feds try to creep me somehow always miss me
–Mr. Fantastik, from the MF DOOM song “Anti-Matter” on the King Geedorah album “Take Me To Your Leader”If you're not hip to the slang in the lyrics above, Mr. Fantastik is essentially saying that the Feds are after him while he's on his grind, but they can't quite get him. There's an implication in there that the Feds are incompetent, but that's more evident from Mr. Fantastik's delivery.
And, it ended like this:
I'm going to end this with another verse from “Anti-Matter,” this one from MF DOOM himself, because the last line is an apt warning:
Yeah, It's neither here nor there, black
Warfare in your ear, clack-clack-clack-clack-clack
What's that? You're hearing things! Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat
Be wearing your thinking hat
Then, on Nov. 30, I did a guest post for Chuck Simon’s Going in Circles Digest, which had the subtitle of “Do You See the Perpetrator? Yeah, I’m Right Here” — a line from DOOM’s “Rap Snitch Knishes.” In that piece, my photo ID was a headless shot of me in a DOOM t-shirt, which was a nod to DOOM’s habit of appearing in public with a metal mask to conceal his face.
From here, you can pick up the story from my appearance Wednesday on Steve Byk’s “At the Races.” I appear on this segment of the radio show 37:37 minutes in, and all questions about the origin of this newsletter and MF DOOM are answered in our convo, along with other issues, including a lively discussion of HISA. (My voice sounds like it’s been through 1,000 blunts this year — DOOM once used that phrase to describe the evolution of his husky voice — but I can assure you that it’s nowhere near that number.)
Click here to listen.
Barry “Sniper” Spears, a friend of mine, is the official distributor of this newsletter on Twitter, because I’m no longer on social media. Barry and I became friends on Twitter some years ago, where we frequently exchanged Mobb Deep gifs in convos. I dunno whether I was Prodigy to his Havoc, but we had a lot of fun together on Racing Twitter, which isn’t exactly a hotbed for hip hop. We’ve also met in person several times, and I’ve watched his professional growth through the years and respect him as a person. At the moment, he’s co-host with Chuck Simon of the excellent Going in Circles Big Monday podcast, and he has a notable voice on Twitter that’s particularly attuned to social and racial justice, which makes him stand out from the racing crowd. Barry unabashedly loves racing, and he’s a great and sincere guy. Give him a follow.