In retrospect, I should have known better.

Hanging all of my hopes for a good evening on a DOOM performance is like getting excited for a rendezvous with a really easy girl. Sure, you hear she’s good… but she’s probably got AIDS.

I should have known better than to think that a guy in a mask wouldn’t try to cheat me out of an evening. Especially since I’ve heard that he’s been doing just that since August. According to reports from concertgoers at Rock the Bells in San Francisco, Mr. Doom either sent a masked imposter to do the show for him or he chose to lip-synch his entire set himself. Similar stories have been recounted, posted, and blogged about since that initial disappointment.

Some die-hard Doom fans still don’t believe it. They say that he’s simply changed his mask or that he’s got some kind of cordless microphone built by weeded-out space aliens that makes his voice sound exactly like it does on recordings. Others, particularly those who have attended one of these recent shows, still try to give him the benefit of the doubt. They say that maybe he’s in the clutches of addiction again, going through one of the very same dark periods that changed Zev Luv X into Doom in the first place.

…or maybe I made up all these theories so I wouldn’t have to believe it…

Even in the hyper-masculine world of hip-hop, where the macho ideals of the mainstream ethos is almost finished crushing the enlightened safe space of the underground, I am willing to admit (without the obligatory “no homo”) that Doom was one of the last rappers that I looked up to. I realize that its dangerous to submit that kind of deference to an alcoholic in a Halloween costume, but every movement must have its leaders. Granted, the movement of post-modern, lo-fi, cartoon-character rappers is not a movement with a capital “M”, but Doom does represent the last vestiges of imagination in rap music.

Many of his fans are refugees from different eras of hip-hop that all got smashed together once white America decided it would only validate scary-black-man rap.

As one of those fans, I really hoped that he would know better than to try to pull it with L.A. fans… on New Year’s f’n Eve.

Fortunately it was a stacked line-up… 2Mex, Casual, Scarub, Grouch & Eligh and Haiku D’Etat were also on the bill, but when the host would ask if the crowd was ready for Doom, the place erupted everytime. Even the fifteen or so timed he had to do it to keep the crowd hyped during the tell-tale awkard pause that preceeded Doom’s set. In some of the other reports I’d read, there was always a long delay between the last act leaving the stage and Doom taking the stage. A long delay… with no music playing…

When he finally did take the stage, it didn’t take long to notice that at the very least it wasn’t him rapping live. He spoke no words to the crowd, he kept the mic completely over his mouth the whole time, and his vocals were studio-quality in a warehouse with more than 500 people in it. Each of his four hypemen could be clearly heard projecting through their microphones. The other thing he may or may not have realized was that there was a video camera right next to his face the entire set. The close-ups from this camera were shown on two 25-foot screens. One was right behind him and the other was in the middle of the warehouse.

His jaw was clearly not moving.

This was a farce that took some enormous balls to pull off. As egocentric as this might sound, it’s one thing to pull this in Nebraska or Idaho or North Dakota. Not only is it easier to fill a room with a recorded vocal in a small club, its also not going to unilaterally destroy your fanbase in one fell swoop. Why he would come to the second-largest market, gather all of his fans and then proceed to shit on them like that amazes me.

It’s also an insult to rappers that work hard to put on shows. 2Mex ripped that night, as did Casual and Haiku D’Etat. The host even brought up KRS-One to do the countdown and rock a couple of his classics. Luckily they put on the Legends after Doom’s abortion of a set. I’ve never really been a huge Legends fan but they put on capes and saved hip-hop that night. There were a few occasions while they were doing their thing that they reminded crowd that this is how it’s supposed to be done. They started a new chant that night that re-invigorated the crowd and probably saved the venue from owing fools money:

“This is L.A., and we do not f*ck around on microphones!”