The other day Pitchfork’s Twitter feed announced “DOOM live album on the way,” to which I replied “‘DOOM live album’ jokes on their way as well,” in reference to the rapper’s recent disastrous attempts to pawn off an impersonator on a crowd at the Congress Theater. Doom’s notorious for pulling this kind of shit at live shows, and there are two distinctly different theories as to why he does it. One camp considers him a flake at best and a rip-off artist at work, and that the purpose of the fake Dooms is to collect the real Daniel Dumille a check without him having to actually go through the hassle of performing for it. The other camp contends that the Doom clones are—like his metal mask, frequent name changes, and the allusions to monsters and supervillains that frequently pop up in his work—just an element in one large piece of conceptual art.
