Will The Real (MF) Doom Please Stand Up?

The question of ambiguity has surfaced yet again with (MF) Doom's recent show's asking the question, is this the real thing or not?

via New York Magazine

After a shaky, lip-synch heavy show in Chicago a few weeks back, the underground rapper DOOM is once again being accused of having sent an impostor to perform in his place. This is something DOOM can easily do because he’s never seen without his trademark silver mask, and has more or less been caught doing before. But the Chicago performance isn’t a clear-cut example. The promoters are convinced it was him, releasing a statement that says they “DO NOT have any proof that the person who performed was not Daniel Dumile, a.k.a. Doom. The show was legally contracted and paid for in full. The show was officially listed on Doom's website.” So, what's going on here?

One of the promoters, Harry Knuckles, explains further:

At no point did we have time to fingerprint him or draw blood for inspection. And IMO, seriously, the dood looked like him, like Zev Love X. yes it was pretty obvious that the guy was lip-syncing, but we can't say that it wasn't Dumile. If Dumile lip-syncs because he is too fat, alcoholic and out of breath to spit his own verse, I guess that's what it has come to now.

Comparing the YouTube videos available to what we saw from DOOM at the Pitchfork Festival, we agree with Knuckles that it was the real deal, just giving a lackluster performance. More interesting is the question of why people are so upset: More than any other rapper’s alter ego, DOOM — whose backstory borrows from the Marvel comics super-villain Doctor Doom — is explicitly a separate entity from Daniel Dumile. What’s the point of creating a character that wears a mask all the time if you can’t send out other people to play that character?

As Dumile has explained:

I'm doing the shows; the stage is my canvas; I'll put whatever up there for the visible eye … Look, was niggas rockin' or was niggas rockin'? See, I'm snapping niggas out of it.

And yet … this would be a good point, if everyone were indeed “rockin.’” If DOOM were able to cultivate a cadre of fakes to entertain the masses, that would be unprecedentedly dope — someone pushing hip-hop’s concept of the alter ego to its extreme point. At this point, however, neither the real nor fake DOOMs seem to be entertaining anybody. Meanwhile, DOOM gets to charge $39.50 a ticket thanks in part to people willing to pay in the hopes they’ll be the lucky ones to get the real DOOM. With that said, there’s no way we’re missing his show this Friday at the Nokia Theater. (another source to story - Brooklyn Vegan)