"Then we gonna keep it in the truest essence of hip hop- the battle. We gotta keep it at the battle, right y'all? Y'all ready for that?"
-Jay-Z, introducing "Takeover" at his Unplugged show with the Roots
There are diss tracks in rock and roll. John Lennon's "How Do You Sleep" and Paul McCartney's response "Dear Friend", or Skynyrd's playful response to Neil Young's "Southern Man" and "Alabama" in "Sweet Home Alabama" are immediate examples. There just aren't a lot of them. Hip hop, on the other hand, is perhaps too well known for lyrical feuds that occasionally spill over into real-life violence. The infamous East Coast/West Coast rivalry of the 1990s is the obvious example here.
There's a certain type of social observer- the kind who tries to link MCs to the West African tradition of the griot, mostly, who probably see the hip hop battle track as a continuation of the jazz tradition of "cutting". Essentially, cutting was an after hours, back room practice of different instrumentalists trying to demonstrate their virtuosity and supremacy with their instrument. Think of a much cooler version of a competition for first chair in middle school band. It's hard to imagine that there's any real connection between that and hip hop, I just like taking undeserved shots at overly earnest cultural anthropologists who imagine that every aspect of a culture is connected.
Really, it's easy to understand why battle tracks and diss tracks have proliferated in hip hop. In rock and roll, there have been battles of the bands, where various groups that no one will ultimately care about competing on stage for applause (bonus points for shows that rigged up bullshit "applause meters" that looked like supercomputers designed specifically for the purpose of interpreting an audience's decibel level in order to crown the best band of the night), it's not as if the bands took the time to rewrite their lyrics to mock another band at the show. But in a freestyling competition, insulting the other rapper is an obvious, indeed expected, way to kill a few bars. Throw in the fact that posturing and braggadocio are an essential element of most hip hop personae and mindsets, and the diss track is a predictable outcome.
Anyway, I'm not here to talk about one of the legendary hip hop rivalries, but one that has been played out before a relatively small audience. The falling out between MF Grimm and MF Doom, and Grimm's diss track "The Book of Daniel", from his 3 disc epic American Hunger.
The first thing worth mentioning about this song is essential to understanding the song- the use of names on the song. At no point in the song, is the name "MF Doom" mentioned. Instead, Grimm and his compatriots from his Monsta Island Czars group call refer to Doom by his old alter ego Zev Love X, and the title refers to his real name, Daniel Dumile. It's probably worth it here for a quick digression on the use of names in African-American art and tradition. Even those of us who have never seen Roots (me included) know the mini-series' most iconic moments- when the slave Kunta Kinte is brutally whipped for refusing to accept his slave name of Toby. This struggle over one of the most basic aspects of identity, and the basic issue of naming can be seen in the use of names in books like Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, or the nameless protagonist of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I also believe that it is tied to the common practice of Blues performers and rappers creating new names. I find it interesting that this practice didn't really show up much in R&B and Soul Music- outside of Tina Turner and Stevie Wonder, I have a hard time thinking of many others who changed their names, and this was during the era of figures like Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but of course all three of those examples had converted to Islam before changing their names, although the name changes still represented a political statement about the nature of black identity. But I digress. Choosing a rap name is such an integral part of the hip hop scene that when a rapper simply uses their real name, like Kanye West, Will Smith or Obie Trice (who has a real name that already sounded like a stage name) it's almost jarring.
Anyway, Daniel Dumile has used a lot of different names and personae in his work. He started out as Zev Love X, in the group KMD in the early 1990s. The group disbanded following the death of the future MF Doom's brother, Subroc, who was hit by a car in 1993, and a battle with their record label over the release of their second album, Black Bastards. After these events, Doom more or less disappeared until 1998 or so, when he reemerged as the Marvel Comics inspired, mask-wearing MF Doom. Since then, he's also released albums under the name of Viktor Vaughn (a play on Dr. Doom's "real name" of Victor Von Doom") and King Geedorah (a Godzilla reference). In "The Book of Daniel", Grimm pointedly refuses to call Dumile by his current chosen name of "Doom", denying him his chosen identity. MIC's Mez, in the second verse further takes away Doom's identity, after mockingly referring to him as "Vicky", a play on Viktor, boasts "Smog made ya mask/Jet Jag [Jet Jaguar is another of Grimm's identities) made your name", and at the end of the song, Grimm pleads "Come home man/ Come home Zev". Doom is called "Daniel" in the title, "Zev Love X", "Vicky", "Sambo", but never "Doom".
The song is a brutal diss track, a history of a friendship that has fallen apart and a plea for a reconciliation. But what brought things to this point? What did Doom do to provoke this 7 minute assault? On his Danger Doom album, with DJ Danger Mouse, Doom snuck in a diss on Grimm's MIC crew that was so fleeting I didn't notice it until it was pointed out to me, a quick reference to "Midgets Into Crunk" which became "Monkeys into Crime" on the remix album "Occult Hymn". Mez references this insult in the second verse, "Midgets into crunk/Monkeys in a cage/Murderers inna cut/Fucking you up on stage". Grimm seems far more hung up on Doom's litltle wise crack than I would have ever expected. "I didn't wanna get at you/ You know this is true/ One thing that stopped me/ Was Lord Dihoo/ But now you're being/ Disrespectful to me and the crew/ Now I gotta do, what I gotta do". (I'm a bit unclear as to the Lord Dihoo reference. A google search reveals that Doom's ASCAP copyrights are under "Lord Dihoo Music", as well as an interview with Doom that includes a photograph captioned as Doom w/ Lord Dihoo. So yeah. Keith might know.) Near the end of the song, Grimm goes on to ask six times "How could you ever diss M.I.C?". Apparently, this really got to Grimm.
I'm not actually clear on what led to the initial falling out between Doom and Grimm. I've heard it had to do with money, but that's all I remember. In the song, Grimm says "I made a mistake, told the press you hold dough/ I see now it's my fault, they didn't need to know/ I apologized to you, I thought we let it go/ B.B King's New York, together did a show/ But look at us now, once again, here we go/Money wasn't worth it, it turned us into foes/ Whenever you had beef, your beef was mine/ I took a life for you, put mine on the line".
But immediately after this apparent request to put their differences aside, Grimm resumes his line of attack, mocking Doom for collaborating with the RZA on the Think Differently Music compilation after complaining to Grimm that he thought RZA had "bit Tick, Tick", a song by Doom and Grimm from the Operation Doomsday album. He goes on to slam Doom for working with Ghostface Killah on the still forthcoming album Swift & Changeable, having once "said Ghost was whack/You didn't like his style". Grimm labels Doom as "Two-faced and three-headed", a reference to Doom's King Geedora persona, a three headed space monster. (Oh, the sentences I never expected to write). Actually, Grimm seems slightly obsessed with other rappers that Doom has worked with in recent years. Besides Ghostface and RZA, Grimm raps, "Mos Def, De La Soul/Roots can't revive you/ When the bullets start flying/ Who's gonna hide you?/ Rhymesayers, Stones Throw/ Nature Sounds signed you/ Make peace with you?/ Zev I tried to". It almost seems like Grimm is jealous, either of Doom's success (at this point, Doom is inarguably a bigger star in the underground rap world than Grimm) or the fact that these people are working with his former friend and he's not.
