I had always relegated MF Doom to the Def Jux white boy backpacker set, even though I knew he was (or had been) Zev Love X from KMD. That first 3rd Bass record was pretty banging, still is really, but I figured that after his brother Subroc passed that he had just faded into the ether like a million other nice MCs. Heath had mentioned a couple tracks that I though were ok, and I liked some of the stuff he had had done with Ghostface, but I never thought in a million years that I'd like Born Like This as much as I do.There is some seriously nasty lyrical hip-hop all over Born Like This. Now going solely by Doom, our hero (or villain) comes with a relentlessly deliberate flow that is going to have a lot of fools burning their rhyme books. I hear UPS is hiring. There are some interesting aspects to the record, like the Bukowski allusion that is the title and the fact that Thom Fucking York is taking time out from reducing his carbon footprint by doing a fucking remix of the first single. I can tell you definitively that the only thing hip-hop needs less than York doing beats is college douchebags having the ability to name drop both Radiohead and Bukowski simultaneously with some pretense of credibility. Oh, Doom, such a double-edged sword you are.
Sadly, I don't think the intellect behind Doom and Born Like This will go unnoticed. In an ocean of shitty ringtone rap, Born Like This is a Muir Island of superhuman hip-hop. Rae and Ghost make appearances, as do Bumpy Knuckles, Prince Paul and a track called Ballskin. Needless to say, with the deck stacked so much to your auditory advantage, you should be dashing over to Lex Records and snapping up Born Like This with the quickness. Here's a link.
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