Mos Def & DOOM

13 February 2010 :: Congress Theatre, Chicago, IL

I suppose, in theory, in hindsight, things could’ve ended up okay. The bait and switch to this vaunted double-bill was that it was no double bill, because there was no DOOM: just super-fan Mos Def in the Mask, taking his turn as a Doompersonator and leading the crowd along in some of Doom’s greatest hits interspersed with mask-free cuts from his recent, excellent The Ecstatic. When he emerged to “Accordion” and the “gotcha!” was revealed, it felt for a brief moment to me like an inspired bit of theater, and (I hoped) indicative of some sort of collaboration between the two recently revitalized emcees. There have been some rumors of a deep Mos Def involvement on the second Madvillian record, after all.

But then shit fell apart again, as it had all night. After pushing the show back a week and jacking ticket prices, the crowd was right to expect a Proper Show and near-ravenous for something worthwhile after a terrifyingly bad BBU set, decent but sedate Qwel set and about sixty-minutes-too-long Mike Relm “performance.” When Mos did come out, 90 minutes after he was supposed to, the joke being on us was not something many were willing to step outside of themselves and laugh good-naturedly about. The crowd had already started throwing cans onstage during the interminable wait beforehand but didn’t let up as the emcee stumbled about the stage, mumbling, “Where’s Doom? We’re right here, this it,” and half-starting/half-finishing whichever track crossed his mind.

This was, apparently, the whole idea, a joke foreshadowed by the all-around-town promotional posters featuring Mos Def wearing a DOOM mask that most people had trusted to be metaphorical before putting down their $40. Mos Def’s little joke went on for awhile before the most comically not-Doom Doompersonator I’ve ever seen—he appeared to be about 5’ 4”, and didn’t bother to hold the microphone to his mask when “rapping” the clearly CD-quality verses—ran around onstage for another twenty minutes, to riotous boos and even more projectile beverages. Then the lights came up; exuent furious audience. I do not believe that trotting out this punchline was the idea from the start, but that it was intended as damage control after Mos high-tailed it stage left amidst a beercan hailstorm. “The fuck is this?” somebody in front of me said about ten minutes into Mos’ set. “I can see this shit on YouTube.” Then he bailed, part of the mass exodus which continued for the remainder of the night, about half of the crowd waiting around to see how shit shook out. It shook out shittily.

The infurating thing being that neither emcee would sell out the massive and beautiful Congress Theater on their own, making this whole fucking shitshow a prime candidate for some class-action suit I’m not going to spearhead but hereby encourage an enterprising young grad student to undertake. Like that time Nickelback fans sued the band for sucking: this was that type of shitshow, the most literal type of shitshow, something the cred-feeble Mos Def would do well to avoid. Doom, meanwhile, will never hear the way his fans clamored for him and waited around dutifully for six hours, through horrendous openers and endless setbacks, to see him perform. Which is a shame for him, really, more than us—but perhaps he didn’t deserve such enthusiasm in the first place.