“From the top of the key for three, villain.”
In that husky, low timbre, MF DOOM starts off his first of two guest verses on “Rock Co.Kane Flow,” the album closer for De La Soul’s seventh album, The Grind Date. It’s an anticipated moment, even now, 20 years since the album was released.
Jake One’s sparse, no-frills beat — just stomping and thudding drums and piano plinks — is fitting terrain for the Villain, as DOOM fills up the space with his coolly disjointed delivery. It’s essentially a DOOM track, with the MC commandeering “Rock Co. Kane Flow” to wax poetic about his pay rate for writing rhymes, mediocre MCs (and their equally mediocre jewelry) and sticking people up for their sneakers (or Atari cartridges).
That DOOM aided De La in the final minutes of The Grind Date is significant when you think about how momentous his 2004 output was. Earlier that year, Madvillainy, his classic album alongside legendary producer Madlib, was finally released after the duo first began working on it in 2002.
The album’s critical and commercial success (Madvillainy sold so well that it allowed Stones Throw, its label, to open an office in Los Angeles’ Highland Park area) led to DOOM having a visibility he hadn’t really had before. It felt like a true introduction to DOOM — from the album’s instantly recognizable cover art of him to his one-line rule on “All Caps,” which is basically his theme song, that devout fans follow to this day: “Just remember all caps when you spell the man’s name.”
After Madvillainy, there were varying releases — the less-favored Venomous Villain and a handful of instrumental albums — before he finished out the year with Mm…Food, DOOM’s food-themed project that gave fans some of his most beloved songs — “One Beer,” “Hoe Cakes” and the anti-why-do-rappers-tell-on-themselves anthem, “Rapp Snitch Knishes.”
And sandwiched in between all of this was DOOM’s feature on “Rock Co.Kane Flow.”
According to a Passion of Weiss interview with Jake One, the producer didn’t even know that DOOM was going to be on the beat.
“Posdnous was the one who told me, I think. This was still when I had a day job so I remember he called because I was at work,” Jake recalled. “He was very casual about it too and was like, ‘We did a song to that beat of yours, I think you’re really gonna like it. Yeah, DOOM’s on it.’”
And although it’s hard to come across any De La interviews where the group spoke about creating the track with DOOM, there is this bit from The Guardian where Posdnuos shared what it was like working with him: “In the studio, he didn’t have the mask on. He was like a kid: ‘Pos, what do you think of this?’ with this sneaky little laugh with his hand over his mouth. Then he’d get in the booth and lay down a rhyme so mind-blowing I’d have to rewrite mine.”
But if there’s anything that truly encapsulates how DOOM stole the show on “Rock Co.Kane Flow” — aside from, you know, his actual feature on it — it has to be the live performance he and De La did of the track on Last Call with Carson Daly in December 2004.
His appearance felt like a celebration — of not just his rap brotherhood with De La but his incredible output that year. Coming from behind Maseo, DOOM takes the stage and basks in the bright lights of his supervillain stardom, with Pos happily kneeling in his presence. He commands the stage with confidence but you can tell he’s having fun. And then, as the performance comes to an end, he returns to the shadows, his superpower of metallic raps left imprinted on everyone in the audience, and his “Rock Co.Kane Flow” spreading to the masses.
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