Setting The Record Straight: A Convo With The Creator of MF DOOM's Mask

During the recent Thundercat episode of The Questlove Show, the creation of MF DOOM's iconic mask was misattributed. After QLS past guests (shout out to Dante Ross), friends of the show, and our legions of dedicated listeners called out the mistake, The Questlove Show is proud to set the record straight by welcoming the mask's original and sole creator, KEO https://www.instagram.com/keo_xmen/—a longtime friend, collaborator, and creative partner of DOOM. In this QLS mini, KEO tells the story in his own words, sharing the true origin story behind the evolution of DOOM's multiple masks. He reflects on their decades-long friendship and the creative bond they forged through Hip-Hop, visual art, and a bygone era of New York City. KEO also recounts his remarkable journey through the culture—from high school lunchroom battles with Slick Rick and the Kangol Crew, to facing off with Big Daddy Kane, to his connection to 3rd Bass. The conversation also explores KEO's ongoing efforts to celebrate the legacy of another fallen friend and cultural innovator whose work helped bridge artistic disciplines and shape the underground Hip-Hop movement. Infinite respect to KEO. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  Hey, I'm Nile Rodgers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series, on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Questlove Show is a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:25Speaker 03

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Akil's Short, not exactly an all-the-way-full ep of Questlove Supreme. We know my penchant for talking, so I'll say it's a short, and then next thing you know, it's four hours later. And we're still talking. First of all, thank you for all the feedback that we've gotten on the shows in the past year. And there's a particular episode, Thundercat.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  It's a great chat.

• 1:52Speaker 03

  Yo, man, I'm still falling down the anime rabbit hole. By the way, I'm here joined by the one that only opened my e-.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  What up?

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Say hello to the people, Mike.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Hey, yo.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  All right, so basically, we were speaking of Thundercat's chain, his MF Doom chain. And, you know, he appraised Han Sholo for designing his jewelry. And, yes, he misspoke about the creator of the MF Doom mask. And Dante Ross, and classic Dante Ross. Hey, what up, son? Lightning out this. Yo, my god. I felt like I was bringing a home of bad report cards. I was like, wait, what did I do? What did I do? Yeah, but, you know, Dante Ross and others have pointed out. And, you know, I'm big on correcting history. And speaking of history, so of course, I immediately wanted to perhaps do a correction episode. And of

• 2:48Speaker 03

  course, there was no malice or harm and foul in our misinformation. And, you know, we're living in a time where a lot of misinformation gets passed on, and no one ever corrects it. So, yes, even us at the Questlove Show are big enough to say, hey, our bad, we want to make it right. So as a result, we want to bring the actual creator of the Doom mask, and hopefully, in this little mini-episode, really, really get proper context on an item that we've talked about and heard about for years. First of all, Akil, good sir, welcome to this short. How are you today?

• 3:25Speaker 04

  Thank you, man. It's an honor to be here. I'm, man, I'm blessed to be alive. I'm grateful. You know what I mean?

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  You guys are well, us are well.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  We are. So where should we start, Mike?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  I mean, so I think we should start where you just sort of set the table. Thundercat misattributed the creation of the mask. And it's such an iconic design, recognizable everywhere. And as much as, you know, you remember, I would love to just hear about how that all came together to begin with.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  So first of all, let me just start by saying, um, yeah, I worked on the mask, both the early version and the later Gladiator version that most people know. But bigger than that, Doom was my brother, man. I loved that cat. I did his first album cover as MF Doom, which is called Operation Doomsday. I designed his logo. I did, the next one we did was recreate KMD's Black Bastard. We did the All the Special Herbs, basically anything on metal face records. And I'm talking about MF Grims, Downfall of Iblis, The Monster Island Zars, Rodan's first album, all of that. I was blessed to be a part of. And Doom

• 4:46Speaker 04

  stayed at my house. I later stayed at his crib in Atlanta, and when he was overseas. He knew my daughter. I know his kids. You know what I mean? That's family. So I don't want to argue with anyone about who did what, or you know what I mean? There's no real status in that. Yeah, because I'm doing new things. I'm currently, and I still work with Jasmine, Doom's widow, and the estate. And, you know, like, we just did this, and then the next one. You understand what I'm saying? So these were things that Doom and I planned while he was still here in the physical. We talked about certain colorways, and he,

• 5:27Speaker 04

  okay, okay, we're gonna do the blue and orange, and we're gonna do the black and silver, and we're gonna keep it light. You know what I mean? And then we had alternative. So we discussed rollout for albums and merch and things that are still in the works. So it's bigger than just the mask. But yes, I had a hand in conceiving of his first mask, because he knew that he wanted to, um, like a graffiti writer, and he came from a graffiti background and mentality. He wanted to keep a level of anonymity. So you recognize the artwork,

• 6:06Speaker 04

  you're a fan, but you don't know the personality behind it. At the time, when Bobito was putting together the album, and Bob had never done artwork before. He always had white label. Fondleum was just singles in a white sleeve. This was a new thing, a special thing. Around that time, the woo had come out, and Ghostface was seen wearing a white stocking mask, a pantyhose, you know, like you would rob a bank with. And Doom was like, yo, that's fly. I need something like that.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Because in Doom's early appearances at, like, New Yorkian, he covered his face similarly with a stocking, correct?

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. Sometimes he wore a bandana, like, you know, Jesse James robbing a train. Sometimes he wore a stocking mask. But we were actively working to develop something unique to Doom and his persona that would allow him. Because he liked to go to the bar and sit there and be a regular dude. And then when he jumped on stage, all of a sudden, people are cheering, and they know the lyrics. But he's sitting next to you the whole night, and nobody bothers him. You know? Now, I don't know if that's because he achieved some level of fame and notoriety as a little kid with KMD, and he had a taste of what that's

• 7:28Speaker 04

  like. But, you know, fame without fortune. I grew up seeing a lot of my hip-hop heroes riding on a subway train with me, right? Somebody assumes you're a star. They may tell us, they might want to try you. They think you have money or jewelry that you don't even have. And now you have to fight every day, or people, you know, even as a graffiti writer, and I'm not a famous dude. I'm relatively, like, under the radar. I don't have a Wikipedia page or anything. I walk down the street, and people call me out by my name that I don't know. And they're like, yo, I follow you on Instagram. And I'm like, okay. Well, what's your name? State your name. You know what I mean? Like, let's

• 8:13Speaker 04

  start with that. Introduce yourself. It's awkward. So I understand Doom's desire to just be able to create, produce music without being a public figure.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  A target.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Yeah. And he's still, to this day, people want to deify him and speculate on, you know, try. I get questions all the time, and I'm just like, yo, my man, he was a regular dude. That's my man. Like, you know, he was about feeding his family and all the things that, you know, when we deify somebody, we almost separate ourselves. You know, what Doom did, you can do. You know, what Questlove does, you, and I'm talking to the kids watching out there. You can create your own universe and artwork and do all these amazing things

• 9:08Speaker 04

  and still be a regular guy, man. You know, I grew up in hip-hop, and a lot of the cats that I knew and worked with, whether through graffiti, emceeing, dancing, they went on to stardom.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  So I went to um high school of music and art quest, I believe you went to a similar school.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  In Philly, yes.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  Philly, right?

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 9:32Speaker 04

  So it's a public school is poor kids, it's kids from middle class backgrounds, kids from the project, but everyone had a talent and a creativity.

• 9:41Speaker 03

  Was this in New York City?

• 9:42Speaker 04

  Harlem, yeah, one hundred and thirty seventh and Convent Avenue.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Oh, so it wasn't like I was under the impression that LaGuardia was the only performing arts school in New York. There was one in Harlem as well.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  It was originally two sister schools, one called Performing Arts, about which the movie and television show Fame was made. Which more about stage and dance and all those kind of things. And then the sister school, which was up on City College campus, was called Music and Art. And we had a fine arts program and we had an instrumental and vocal music program. So Art Wright went there, the drummer Mackie from the Crowmags was there, Scheme, you know, the the Kangol Crew, my brothers Dana Dane, uh.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Black Rick.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  Black Rick. They were in class with me. We used to battle every day in a lunchroom.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  They went there? Damn, okay.

• 10:31Speaker 04

  Um, the Fresh Three MCs, F R E.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  E S H, yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Ones to have records out of that school, okay? You know, jazz musicians famous, uh, all manner of creatives were there.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  I never knew that. Okay.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  Bernard Wright went to my high school.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  What?

• 10:51Speaker 04

  Rest in peace, yeah. He was a little older than me. He was back when I was coming in as a freshman, because I got there in nineteen eighty, eighty to eighty one.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Gotcha.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  Lennon got murdered.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Okay, so MC Search talks about seeing me battling the Kangol Crew at the lunch table and it inspiring him to believe that he could do this thing. Before he was MC Search, he didn't have a name. He was just Michael Baron. And.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  He always bigs me up for inspiring him. So I want people to understand that whatever Doom did, he's a regular cat and you can do that too. Don't, don't um disqualify yourself. Because in the era I came from, we were all just um creating. We didn't have social media, we didn't have institutions behind us, money, banking, corporate, nothing. We just, we just made art for art's sake.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  How many versions of that mask were, like, as far as the evolution of it, were there four different stages of that mask or?

• 12:01Speaker 04

  So the first mask, which you see in the first three music videos, which were shot by a cat named uh Adam Balalow. Okay, and he went on to be a big documentary filmmaker. You can check him out. I know you're a documentary.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  With yourself, um, so he was at NYU Film Student at the time. I don't know where Doom met him, but you know Doom had a way of attracting talent and getting cats on board. So they did these first three music videos for free, um, question mark with featuring Curious, which we shot in in Sunset Park in Brooklyn. That mask was cheap plastic, like one of these Halloween things you had when you were a kid with a rubber band in the back.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Mm hmm, okay.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  And I spray painted it with um Rustoleum aluminum spray paint and I drew the details with a marker and I cut it with a razor blade to the right shape. That one did not last. In fact, um, at that video shoot in Sunset Park, after they cut, he set it on the bench next to him. Everyone was drinking Jack Daniels, right? Someone, I'm not gonna mention the name, sat on the mask.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Eh.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  And the things, it's split across the nose and eyebrow. So Doom brought it back to me, to my studio, which is in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and he wanted me to try and repair it. And we began discussing, he was like, yo, I need something solid, man.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Sorry to interrupt. That original design, you know, the perception of it was that that one was more directly informed by Doctor Doom. The Doctor Doom mask from Marvel, is that, is that correct?

• 13:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was my inspiration. I drew little rivets on it and certain uh shading, uh, you know, Jack Kirby had a way of very simply illustrating uh metal and mechanical that, that, you know, people still try to get to this day. And it resonated with graffiti writers because it was thick black outlines. And it was something you could do with spray paint, you understand? So, yeah, there was a lot of that in there. Um, Marvel, Disney, please do not come for me. We created our own thing. This was a unique construction, okay? It's Mikey Mouse, it ain't Mickey Mouse.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  Got you.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  So after that one split, we got the idea that, you know, we were running around Lower Manhattan. Bobito used to live on Fourteenth Street and his shop was on Ninth Street. And we shot the My Favorite Ladies video on Second Avenue. It was all the East Village we were running around. You know, they were on the first shows Doom ever did were at Brownies and and Pyramid. These little LES Alphabet City punk rock clubs, right? They had a lot of antique stores over there and curio shops and shops that sold, you know, there was an entire place uh on Houston where it comes to a triangle near near First that was an outdoor, you know, it was covered like a tent.

• 15:15Speaker 04

  And they had everything, signs from the subway and basically whatever you could. So I said, maybe we can find a suit of armor. Somebody's got an actual medieval suit of armor. And we could use that that as the basis. While we were running around, we didn't find anything suitable. We passed a place called Forbidden Planet, which is a huge comic book store on Broadway, like twelfth or thirteenth, when you're going uptown towards Union Square. They got the whole block with a wraparound window.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  Me and Doom were both comic book heads, you know what I mean? Since kids and a movie had just come out with Russell Crowe called Gladiator. And we'd never seen the film. We didn't know anything about it. We didn't know who Russell Crowe was, but we saw the mask. It was like a souvenir of a Gladiator helmet, which had a big fin on the top and spikes sticking out, that metal. You know, it was a full, full helmet and it wouldn't, wouldn't stand in the window. And I was like, yo, peed that. So we bagged that up and I took the faceplate off, which was hinged right here, so it could swing like a motorcycle helmet, you know what I mean?

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 16:33Speaker 04

  And discarded the rest. And we just worked with that metal faceplate. And I, I took it to a cat I knew who did sculpture and had some welding tools. And we made certain modifications so that he could wear it comfortably.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 16:48Speaker 04

  And it had the inside of a construction worker's helmet. There's like a fitted plastic, you know, like in the back of a fitted cap, adjustable. There's this webbing that your, your construction helmet sits on it, so it doesn't actually sit on your head. It floats, right? So we just took that webbing and we put two screw holes and we affixed the uh first version of the metal mask to that.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 17:16Speaker 04

  And Doom rocked with that for a long time. And it also served as a weapon. You could hold, you know, when we start going to bigger venues, SOBs and um BB Kings, which is no longer Raven, they used to metal detect you. They used to search you to get in.

• 17:35Speaker 03

  I, I was gonna ask about airports, but go ahead.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. So he had a case made for the mask and he could say, listen, I'm performing, this is part of my boom, boom, boom. They would let him in. But if you held that thing by the back of the straps and you caught somebody with it, it not only weighed about seven pounds, it was stainless steel and those two tusks were sharp. Right? So I've seen dudes try to jump on stage and Doom catch him with that and and boom, it's a rap. So it served many purposes.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 18:10Speaker 04

  And there were days when, and I don't wanna snitch, uh Doom is no longer here, so he's immune to prosecution. You know, he was a creative dude, but he wasn't soft by any means, okay?

• 18:23Speaker 03

  I got you.

• 18:24Speaker 04

  A lot of people think nerd rap or something. No, a nerd is a sucker. You can be well read. You can be into many, many aspects of culture and history and religion and sciences and mathematics and still not be soft, okay? So there were times when we had to sneak weapons into the club and he made a case with a phone. You know, if you purchased a gun, what it would come in, a hard case. As a microphone is carried that way or an instrument, it has a foam cutout for the mask. So the weapons went under the mask, so we could get through the metal detector and say, hey, man, it's just my, it's my costume.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  Understanding there'd be a little twenty five automatic inside of BB Kings.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Yikes, okay.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  So, yeah, the mask served many purposes. What happened, it became totally corroded and rusted.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  The second version did? It became?

• 19:19Speaker 04

  The metal.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. So first he got it re-chromed. And he purchased a couple more, so he had backup versions. He put a ruby right here at the third eye. He also added on the interior a whole lot of um different minerals and uh crystals and things which which held certain power to him. Okay?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 19:43Speaker 04

  And herbs and he was very into, you know, esoteric sciences and natural, you know.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Healing, yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  So he told me the mask was uncomfortable, the rock for hours. So he put some copper in there and copper has a um a healing property. I don't know a lot about these things.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Wow, okay.

• 20:04Speaker 04

  So, yeah, he made, he made a lot of modifications. There's a gold plated one. Okay, there was the silver version, which he got re-chromed and added a ruby. So there've probably been at least four versions of the metal mask, which was based on Gladiator.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 20:28Speaker 04

  Mask. But the original mask, I still have the, um, we attempted to repair it. But it's, it's, it's uh broken. But that's, that's the first Doom mask and to me was a superior visual. Maybe it wasn't as sturdy, but it was amazing, you know what I mean?

• 20:56Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel.

• 21:14Speaker 05

  My small experience with the discrepancy in the business of music made me angry in the best way. And I wanted to, I wanted to finish. So I started really like leaning into my therapy, trying to get down to like, what matters now? Somewhere Miguelito felt like he didn't have a place to say how he felt. And music was the place that I went to, to say how I felt.

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• 22:28Speaker 04

  So the funny thing, now they just made a reboot of Gladiator, the movie. They made a part two.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  And all the younger kids who don't remember were like, yo, he's wearing a Doom.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:46Speaker 04

  Oh, they stole that mask from MF Doom. And I'm thinking like Jay-Z said, he could make a Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can, right? We made that mask more popular than a big fucking budget Hollywood studio film with stars, and nobody remembers that bullshit.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Or outlaw culture, man. It's the absolute, like, genius marketing device. It's so weird because when I first started going to Fat Beats and they were trying to give me, they're like, no, man, Zev Love X has a new character out, and this is what he, and I was like, why would he? Like, I came from the, the school of like, you know, a big giant KMD fan and was wondering, like, why is this shrouded in mystery? Like, show us your face and whatnot. I do have to ask, so I believe I was witness once to a Doom show that wasn't a Doom show, air quotes.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  The specs on that look so unique and specific as a one-off art piece. How are cats getting, and I'm talking about the occasional Doom imposters that were out there?

• 24:01Speaker 04

  So what I know is that Doom had legal issues that didn't allow him to travel.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  To travel, I get it, okay.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  He had his man, who was just basically his same physical stature, right?

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Got you.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  And taught him how to Milli Vanilli this shit, so that he could appear with the mask on and get that money.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  That's almost, that's almost as legendary as within him just being MF Doom, but also, you know?

• 24:35Speaker 04

  Right, but we've all gone to shows where half the Wu-Tang didn't show up, or, you know, Lauryn Hill was seven hours late. So he just found a way to circumvent that. If the powers that be didn't want to let him into the country, he'd send his man and still get that paycheck.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  And it still goes on.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  Two shows on the same night, and the fans are happy.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  No, the fans wasn't happy, no. Cause I was at, I was at a couple of them.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  You was at one of them?

• 25:05Speaker 02

  I was at two of them, and we was not happy. But I do, I, I certainly understand, though. I certainly understand.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  When I was a kid, when I was a kid, I used to go to the Latin Quarters and cats had singles out, and you never knew what they looked like. Pretty video, right? So other dudes would show up. It's your money. And, and promote themselves as being you. And I've seen it.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just did a De La Soul episode in which, um, Maceo shares a story about dealing with the fake, um, MC Shan. The fake MC Shan and the fake, uh, BDP. So, no, I know that can happen.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  My man at the time, and we're talking 86, my running partner, he was from Brooklyn, but he was Cool Keef's cousin, right? His name was Ron Gio. So he had a lot of game, and he got us into the club free. I didn't, I wasn't even aware. He had told Mike Goldberg, who owned the Latin Quarters, that I was Mike D from the Beastie Boys, so that we could get in free. I didn't even know he had done this. Now, in 86, the Beasties had the biggest record on the planet, you understand? You know, this is why I'm so protective today of my IP, because I come from a time when

• 26:33Speaker 04

  we didn't have, um, any podcasts, videos, books, there were no,

• 26:38Speaker 02

  No way to tell your whole story, really.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  There were no institutions teaching hip-hop. We had to police ourselves. I'm very grateful for all, all the people that jumped in the comments and was like, nah, that was Kio, because your name was all you had. Right, especially as a graffiti writer. So we could parody Marvel Comics, or the Kung Fu flicks, or even real-life historical figures. You could claim to be Frank Nitti or Al Capone, but you couldn't say you were Rakim.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Bite off, you understand? So in graffiti, we would take Mickey Mouse and redraw him and give him a blunt and a baseball hat or whatever, and a gold chain, and that was fly. We could bite off of the Disney Corporation, or copy lettering from the cereal box, or Comet, or Ajax, right? But I couldn't copy lettering from Dandie. Somebody would call me out on it. They'd say, yo, you bit that. Now that seems to go out the window. There's actually two Rakims now. There's two,

• 27:48Speaker 03

  No.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  Yes, there's a Rakim who is a, um, reggaeton performer.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  Oh, well, yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  There's two Nas's. There's little Nas and big Nas. They're both making fucking records at the same time. In my day, that would have gone to blows and possibly, you know, even worse.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  Times have changed.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  You would fight to defend your name.

• 28:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  So when somebody comes on and says, uh, they created the mask, I immediately go to a place of ego and pride that I, is instilled in me from a kid. We battled, you know what I mean?

• 28:29Speaker 02

  That's perfectly understandable, too.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  But I'm trying to be a little more humble and, and adult about life these days.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  We just wanted to give you your flowers, man, and, you know, definitely correct history and let our, let our listeners out there know.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  Cause AI is a dangerous thing now. It just skims whatever the, the, is on the internet. So if I Google, who made the Doom mask, they're gonna find your podcast, and it'll say, Han Cholo created the Doom mask, right? I'm like, okay.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  I, I doubt that's gonna happen now, cause,

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Exactly, we're able to set the record straight.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  The way we got dealt with.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  But listen, people don't understand how we grew up. Fat Joe has a podcast now, and all I see is people calling him a cat, and, and he, he, no way you did these things. Now, I happen to know Fat Joe was, you know, they stuck up my man, him and Brim jumped out the van with a sawed-off shotgun and took their spray paint. This one, Joe had records out. He was hooking up dudes for spray paint. So when he tells a story, I believe him. I, I know, now, there's no beef anymore. I love Tats Crew, Bi, OBG, Terror Squad, those are my people, but back then, they were dangerous motherfuckers, bro.

• 29:48Speaker 04

  But when I go to tell my own life story, it sounds crazy that we could leave the house with 35 cents, hop the turnstile, steal spray paint, rack up some 40 ounces, rob somebody for their weed, coming out of the weed spot on Myrtle Ave, and then wind up the end of the night at the World or the Tunnel, partying with Grace Jones and Madonna. And that was all in one day. I battled, you know, um, I tell people, yo, I battled Big Daddy Kane in Albee Square Mall while Biz was doing the beatbox before he had records. And they go, yeah, right. Sure you did.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  I believe you.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  And I battled Napoleon at fucking Water.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Because we didn't have a camera to film everything.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  I did want to ask you one more question. I know you mentioned for Doom, as a person, as an artist, the importance of the mask is him being able to sort of separate his identity as a regular person versus who he is on stage. But also think of this, right? Like, I started listening to Doom when I was seventeen. I got a seventeen year old son now, and the only artist that I rock with and he rock with is Doom. You know what I'm saying? So in a sense-

• 31:01Speaker 04

  My grandson, my grandson is five and loves Doom, and I didn't put him on the Doom.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Right, and so-

• 31:07Speaker 04

  He found that himself.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Doom Doom is one of those few artists that is bigger than life, and I do feel like the mask is an important part of that. So I'm I'm curious, what do you think is the importance of the mask to Doom's legacy?

• 31:21Speaker 04

  You have to understand the current popular climate at that time was a lot of pretty boys and and really slick, high budget videos, dudes dancing with their shirt off. And Doom, to him, it was like, yo, that's not what this is about. It's about rec, right? How nice you are, how nasty you are with the skills. So there were dudes who looked a certain way, who maybe weren't as skillful. You you know the story of Martha Wash, the big woman who sang?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, the weather girls.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  Right, because she was a large size woman, they put on models to lip sync for her in the video. So that was happening in hip hop. It became more about your appearance than your skills. And again, Doom is old enough, even though he's far was far younger than I, he remembers an era when you didn't know what you you'd hear the record, right? You didn't know what cats looked like. It didn't matter. So he wanted to be judged on his creative skills, not what he looked like. But honestly, and he says it himself, he he wasn't a a Tom Cruise looking dude. He was not a movie star handsome kind of cat.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  And he made no bones about that. Girls loved him. He was charming. He had a way to talk to females that blew my mind. But, you know, he says it, a a rather ugly brother with flows this gorgeous.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Bars.

• 32:52Speaker 04

  So that he told you why he wears a mask. People want to um make it something it isn't. It's real simple. You know what I mean? It's about the creativity, about being allowed to be creative. Because you got to remember, the image on his KMD album cover is the excuse that they used to cancel him and his younger brother, rest in peace, of rock, because of what it looked like without ever listening to the shit.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Without even having heard it.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  So he wanted to take that out. He, yo, I might be a black dude, a Spanish dude, I might be Chinese under this mask. It don't fucking matter.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  I'm so glad we was able to have you in, uh, to hear from you directly, to hear these stories. I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, Doom means a lot. To me, it means a lot to us. And and it's dope to meet you, uh, having contributed such an iconic piece of like hip hop art to the world that I feel like is going to outlive all of us.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  May I shout out what I'm working on right now before we wrap?

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 33:56Speaker 04

  So we're doing the Team One documentary right now. Stay tuned for that.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  Starling and and and, um, Redman is in there. Uh, everybody, everybody is in.

• 34:27Speaker 07

  The Quaslop Show is a production of iHeartRadio.

• 34:36Speaker 07

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• 35:07Speaker 06

  If you love music and great artist interviews, check out Before the Moment, hosted by Nile Rodgers. This new series follows Nile as he travels across the country, talking with some of today's most fascinating artists about the moments that shaped their lives and careers. From hit makers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the point where everything changed. And this podcast tells the stories that came before. Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series, on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 35:45Speaker 03

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.