Mask-wearing underground rapper MF Doom made an album at a DIY art gallery in Chinatown in Philly
The rapper born Daniel Dumile, who died in 2020, created his album 'Vaudeville Villain' in Philadelphia. A new book tells the story.
A new book tells the story of how late rapper MF Doom came to create one of his most highly regarded albums in 2001 at Space 1026, the punk rock art gallery then-located on Arch Street.
The Chronicles of Doom: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast, a new biography by S.H. Fernando Jr., tells the story of how a visit to the Philly nightclub Fluid led Daniel Dumile, the British American underground rapper who performed as MF Doom, to begin work on Vaudeville Villain, the 2003 album credited to his pseudonym Victor Vaughn, at the Chinatown art gallery.
The album, which was released on Sound-Ink Records in 2003, was a highlight of Doom’s most productive period in the mid-00′s, which also included Madvillainy, with producer Madlib in 2004, and The Mouse and the Mask, with Danger Mouse in 2005.
“It’s a really futuristic album,” Fernando told Peter Crimmins of WHYY, of Vaudeville Villain, in which Dumile inhabits the persona of Vaughn, who was named after the Marvel supervillain Victor Von Doom. “I think only now people are getting that album I think initially, when it first came out, people were like, ‘What the hell is this?’”
In 2001, Dumile as Doom came to Philadelphia to perform at Fluid, the club just south of South Street on 4th Street that was a familiar haunt for Philly DJs like King Britt, Josh Wink, and Cosmo Baker, who booked Doom for his Remedy hip-hop night. The events of the evening are chronicled on “Monday Night at Fluid,” a King Honey song featuring MF Doom, Kurious, and King Ghidra.
Doom was staying in Philadelphia with his friend Maximillian Lawrence, a cofounder of Space 1026, a gallery space and creative community founded in 1997 by Lawrence and others after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. He began recording the playfully hallucinatory Vaudeville Villain at Space 1026 in 2001, Fernando writes, before completing the album with producers in New York.
Space 1026 moved out of its Arch Street building in 2018 and is now located at 844 N. Broad Street, near the Met Philly. This fall, the gallery hosted a photo show called “Commencement: Groundwork” featuring the work of Philly photographer Zoe Strauss and 321 Think Tank that was the first installation of an ongoing exhibition.
Last month, the gallery hosted an event celebrating MF Doom and his legacy with Fernando and Baker. On Friday, the gallery will begin displaying artwork that will go on sale on Dec. 13. at its annual auction. More info at Space1026.com.