The Thousands

Urgent surrealist headtrips from DOOM – formerly MF Doom, Viktor Vaughn, King Geedorah and half of Madvillain and Danger Doom – on the masked Atlanta, Anti-rapper’s welcome return album, BORN LIKE THIS. Named after and sampling Charles Bukowski’s end-world fantasy poem, DINOSAURIA, WE, BORN LIKE THIS finds DOOM in deadly, sour-sick form – ‘Same guy, same disguise, sick aim, eye stare’ – riffing smart on his usual themes of super villainy, game tech fetishism and eye-popping volumes of weed, but this time with added, industry-dissing swagger, abandoned hope and a production job heavier on sounds of suspense and confusion.**’Gazillion Ear’ starts with a spooky Hammond loop, zombie bass walk and siren motif from J Dilla’s DONUTS before breaking into full-blown space jam with Bruce Haack -style descending pulse and God knows what kind of euphonic free associative word play from DOOM – his ‘PHD in indiscreet street haggling’ in full flight picking apart a rapper hell bent on making a ‘gazillion grand’. ‘Absolutely’ similarly damns ego-mad MCs with street-war imagism, horror strings and overdubbed COPS crime scene report, while ‘Batty Boyz’ ingeniously uses Batman and Robin’s latent homosexuality as metaphor for faking in the rap game.