Believe it or not, there was once a time when MF Doom did not rule the seedy, befuddling world of underground hip-hop. Those were the days when Prince Paul reigned supreme, and his production work with De La Soul inspired beatmakers the world over. MF Doom was still kickin' it back then, though not under the same moniker. Back then, Doom went by Zev Love X and spit rhymes in the long-vanished style of early-90's jazzy rappers like A Tribe Called Quest and The Pharcyde. Doom's crew was called KMD (Kausing Much Damage), and consisted of Zev Love X, Rodan, and DJ Subroc, Doom's younger brother. Not exactly foreshadowing Doom's more recent work, Subroc's production style sounds like a virtual replica of Prince Paul's best shit with De La Soul - snappy, eccentric, built entirely on breaks, a seamless, meticulously-arranged collage of diverse samples. In fact, KMD sounds so much like De La Soul that it's nearly impossible to distinguish them from their more famous "plugs". But hell, that's no complaint - Mr. Hood is a lost classic of the jazz-rap era, and belongs right up there with The Low End Theory and The Jungle Brothers' Done By The Forces Of Nature. Tragically, DJ Subroc was killed in a car accident in 1993 and Zev Love X left music until 1997, when he reinvented himself as MF Doom and changed hip-hop. This might not please lovers of MM... Food or Vaudeville Villain, but it's a totally dope example of old-school turntablism and early socially conscious hip-hop.
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