KMD feat. Daniel Dumile aka Zev Love X bka MF Doom – Peachfuzz
Today we learned that Daniel Dumile, perhaps best known as the masked rapper MF Doom, passed away on Halloween in 2020. Though we’ve so many legitimate giants, this one hits especially hard, since at 49, Dumile perhaps had decades of choice material to release, but now we’ll never know what he might have created. While I’m sure I’ll spend a great deal of time with my favorite recording from the MF Doom years, Madvilliany, today I felt like going back to the beginning, and when I heard Daniel Dumile first, when he was known as Zev Love X in the group KMD. “Peachfuzz” wasn’t the first time I’d heard his unique style, as he’d first popped up on my radar, as was the case with many, due to his guest verses on 3rd Bass’ “The Gas Face.”
Returning to this early work upon hearing of his passing, it’s fascinating to note how different both the flow and the beat sound from other groups of this period. It’s not as if it’s an entirely unknown or unexpected sound, but there’s still something about it that sounds…just…different. Some of it is in the that rapid, verbally dexteritous, flow that became a hallmark of MF Doom, but it’s also in the choice of samples. Hearing this now, in an era where it’s so easy to look up on the internet and figure out the samples of records, I was surprised to learn that the song is based primarily (in addition to familiar drums from Funkadelic’s “You’ll Like It Too”) on two separate songs from soul crooner O.C. Smith. Surprise mainly because, one of the songs “Sounds of Goodbye” was on a record I used to own from my family collection, but somehow I’d never ever played on “Soul Kitchen” back in my Album 88 days. That brilliant attention to detail, a focus on samples that felt novel and wordsmithery that was beyond peer are what I’ll remember most about Mr. Dumile. I don’t often say this, but I truly mean it. Rest In Power, Daniel Dumile aka Zev Love X aka MF Doom.