MF Doom

I'm a big fan of MF Doom, Viktor Vaughn, King Geedorah, and any other projects by Daniel Dumile. Dude has the illest flows and rhyme schemes that interweave like ivy. He also creates albums with concepts, but doesn't let them get corny. He explains the multiplicity of his characters and the creative concepts behind his album construction very well in this interview. But the weakness of his process is that he apparently feels that albums are made better by shovelling on these silly skits. Now, they're not your average hip-hop skits featuring several of the rapper's friends mumbling about weed or how someone needs to get shot. They're entirely made up of samples, usually of old Fantastic 4 cartoons (to suit his name). But in a 45 minute album, 10 minutes of it might be these "skits," reducing the part that's worth listening to more than once (or once to begin with) to slivers of between reaching for the fast-forward button. However, there seems to be an answer for maximum Doom: collaborating with someone who has a big enough musical presence not to let his samples get in the way. This has now been shown to be true twice. First on 2004's Madvilliany with producer Madlib (which was nominated for or won ever hip-hop/music accolade that year), then again last year with the less-serious but still fantastic DANGER DOOM with producer DJ Danger Mouse (of The Grey Album fame). These fellas keep Doom on the straight and narrow: lyrics and beats. While Madvilliany dabbles with some public-domain speech samples, they almost always serve to add to the ambiance of the record as short asides instead of adding distracting filler. Learn the lesson doggy. Either taper your own production to the more efficient and listener-friendly style of your peers or just keep teaming up with someone who can keep their hand out of the self-indulgence cookie jar.