MF DOOM.

Daniel Dumile was born in Hounslow, London on July 13, 1971 and raised in Long Beach, New York. As Zev Love X he broke through with the group KMD, but the 1993 death of his brother and bandmate DJ Subroc — followed by their label shelving the album Black Bastards — knocked him out of music entirely. When he resurfaced in New York's open-mic scene in the late 1990s, his face was hidden behind a metal mask modeled on Marvel's Doctor Doom, and the rapper Daniel Dumile had been replaced, permanently, by a supervillain.

Operation: Doomsday (1999), released on Fondle 'Em and later reissued through his own Metal Face Records, rebuilt underground rap in his image: cartoon-sampling beats, free-associative internal rhyme, and a persona that treated the industry as an enemy to be plotted against. What followed was one of the great runs in hip-hop history — the Madvillainy album with Madlib and the food-obsessed solo classic MM..FOOD (both 2004), plus records as King Geedorah and Viktor Vaughn, instrumental Special Herbs volumes, and later collaborations with Danger Mouse, Czarface and Bishop Nehru.

Born in the UK and never a US citizen, DOOM was denied re-entry to the United States after a 2010 tour and spent his final decade based in London — still masked, still elusive, occasionally sending imposters to lip-sync shows as a piece of villainous theater. He died on October 31, 2020, at age 49; his family announced the news on New Year's Eve, and tributes cast him as exactly what the mask promised: your favorite rapper's favorite rapper.

His estate keeps the catalog alive through the official Gas Drawls store and Metalface Records — including a 20th-anniversary edition of MM..FOOD in 2024, accompanied by an official animated video for 'Vomitspit' released on DOOMSDAY, the annual October 31 remembrance. Just remember: ALL CAPS when you spell the man name.