Rapper MF Doom Big Ups Charles Bukowski

We here at the American Songwriter news desk have a favorite rapper. His name? Doom.
We here at the American Songwriter news desk have a favorite rapper. His name?

Doom.

Doom has a new album out on Lex Records called Born Like This, the long awaited follow up to 2004’s Madvilliany and 2005’s The Mouse and the Mask, which you can stream in its entirety here.

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke is a fan of the super-villian obsessed beatsmith — he remixed the track “Gazillion Ear” (available as a bonus track). The Wu Tang Clan are also in Doom’s corner — Ghostface Killa and Raekwon both appear on Born Like This.

Doom (AKA MF Doom, AKA Daniel Dumile) has a secret weapon on his new album, previously untapped in the annals of hip hop — the poetry of Charles Bukowski.

The track “Cellz” features the late poet reading his poem “Dinosauria, We” over Doom’s funky music.

“Don’t freak with old Buke. Buke is nice,” Doom told Rolling Stone. “He’s as good as the rest of the rappers on there. He kind of sets the tone for the record, being that we’re living in what he was kind of describing. He might’ve been reaching for the worst description based on what he saw us heading to, but it happened and that made me go, ‘Wow, that’s ill. Kinda prophetic words.’ ”

If rap is your thing and depressed poets turn you on, check out “Cellz” and Born Like This now.

Doom – “Cellz”

Doom – “”Vomit Spit”