“We will not allow a substitute to perform in his place” Those who didn’t take the refund were gambling that the concert would go ahead, or that Dumile would be the one under the DOOM mask. Just one day before the Toronto show, REMG offered a refund to anyone who wanted it, and re-billed it as a DOOM solo headlining performance.īy this point, fans were feeling nervous. DOOM’s manager, however, denied the imposter rumours and insisted he’d still play the show. It wasn’t announced why, but timing and other accounts suggest it was directly related to the DOOMposter incident.Īccording to Ramos, who’s now the director of live music for INK Entertainment’s and its hip-hop division, RapSeason, both artists were already paid up front. After the Chicago show, he quickly dropped off the tour. I’m not going to see no particular person.”īut Mos Def evidently wasn’t on the same wavelength. “There’s no impostor… When I go to a show, I’m going to hear the music. The character that I hired, he got paid for it. So who I choose to put as the character is up to me. I choose different characters, I choose their direction and where I want to put them. “I liken it to this,” Dumile said in an interview. It wasn’t the first time DOOM had been accused of sending someone in his place, though. The venue confirmed it, but DOOM’s camp called it patently false.

Everything sounded a little too precise, and that guy in the mask didn’t quite look like the pictures…īy the next day, reports that it was an imposter were all over music blogs. But when DOOM played, people were suspicious. Mos Def performed as planned, even dropping a few DOOM verses in his own set. There was even a Toronto-specific illustrated poster made by artist Kagan McLeod.Īfter an initial last-minute postponement the day the Toronto show was supposed to happen in January, the Chicago show instead started the tour in February. The normally press-shy DOOM granted a cover-story interview to Toronto’s Eye Weekly.

The announcement inspired cautious optimism and a lot of hype. It was the scandalous culmination of a disastrous mini-tour during which Dumile had allegedly been sending out an imposter in a mask to perform for him. The show that went down at the now-gone Kool Haus concert venue on February 25, 2010, is the stuff of local legend. In the last week, everyone from Busta Rhymes to Tyler, The Creator paid tribute. He was your favourite rapper’s favourite rapper. He might not have been a household name, but those who loved him pored over his words, memorized his albums, learned his dense mythology. He’s revered for his intricate multi-syllabic lyrics, VHS plundering production and kayfabe-revering persona play. On the rare occasions he performed live, he always wore a mask. The man born Daniel Dumile released music under a variety of different aliases – not just MF DOOM, but Viktor Vaughn, King Geedorah, Madvillain, etc. The legendary rapper, whose death was announced on New Year’s Eve, is maybe hip-hop’s most obsessed-over cult artist. In Toronto, MF DOOM has a very specific legacy: one infamous concert at the Kool Haus in 2010.

New mf doom mixtape