Blake Lethem speaks on the BIRTH of MF DOOM

My dude Jamar shared this youTube video interview of Blake Lethem, the artist who designed the original and second visages for the everyone's favorite masked microphone master, MF DOOM. As an artist who is infatuated with DOOM's vision and overall place in hip hop culture and history, I enjoyed this four minute clip featuring a well-informed insider's perspective on the super villain's mentality and evolution...

In a matter of speaking, Blake Lethem is the man behind DOOM's mask. Not that he is DOOM, but that he worked with the Villain to design his first and second disguises.

Lethem (also known as KEO and SCOTCH 79) is a Brooklyn-born graffiti writer, designer, MC, and raconteur whose stories go much deeper than his time spent with the Villain.

Good stuff. I think the line he draws connecting the line between KMD and Wu-tang and back to MF DOOM is a bold and revealing one, and it explains DOOM's wild popularity in the underground while being totally ignored by mainstream rap listeners. "I'm not a monkey on a string dancing for you..." sounds like the kind of thing an artist like DOOM would say in private about what he does.  If you haven't seen it already, click here to check out DOOM's lecture/interview in Madrid for the Redbull Music Academy series. Having watched that a million times, this really fits into DOOM's comments there.

holla!
-samax.  

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