MF Doom
Live From Planet X
Nature Sounds
By far, the most dramatic and encouraging sign that this mysterious planet does indeed exist is the emergence of an audio document released by the Nature Sounds label of New York City. Though touted as a live recording, Live From Planet X cannot be confirmed as authentic as such, but the unmistakable flow of the enigmatic Doom opens the mind to all kinds of wondrous possibilities about the relationship of Man to the cosmos.
For one thing, Doom has been spotted numerous times in the continental United States since his spectacular 1999 debut. He is heard on this CD thanking attendees who bought his pre-millennial masterpiece Operation Doomsday, and recommending the purchase of Madvillainy, which is “comin’ soon.” By the time that critically-acclaimed album was released in 2004, this concert recording had already been all over the Internet, along with rough mixes of Mm..Food and Madvillain: Retarded Hard Copy.
Planet X is believed to reside well past the orbit of Pluto, the ninth and most distant planet in our solar system, so the question is: How did Doom manage to travel from Earth to X and back so fast? He is known to abstain from many of the indulgences common to MCs, like expensive cars and jewelry. Were his royalties siphoned into next-generation spacecraft, or (more likely) is Doom functioning as an intermediary between humans and the residents of Planet X, or is he a double-agent?
Further confusing matters is the question of whom his audience consists of. “Aw, shit, much love, much love … There must be a million muthafuckas up in here,” he says at the start. “Muthafuckas” is most typically used to denote a human, and so it would here if the album had not (allegedly) been recorded on Planet X. But it can’t be possible for such advanced space-travel technology to exist sufficient to carry vast numbers of people across the universe for a rap show – can it? A point in favor of the proposition is that no arena exists on Earth, to the writer’s knowledge, with the capacity to hold anywhere near a million people – no more than a couple hundred thousand, at best.
This may be one of the hidden messages Doom is fond of inserting within his music. Is he suggesting the existence of a vast human-like population on Planet X, or merely that it contains life of some kind? (Obviously, if the residents of X were so enamored with humanity that they would pay to bring MF Doom so many light-years away, they might appreciate the nomenclature, or at least recognize it.)
Another curiosity concerns the disc itself, which times out at only 39 minutes. The various songs are not indexed, so the listener must hear the entire thing at once. It may be that Doom’s institutional supporters are rationing the flow for new listeners whose tender brains may require a forcible administration of verses.
Nature Sounds: http://www.nature-sounds.net/
