By Steven Psyllos

MF DOOM

BORN DANIEL DUMILE of Long Island, lives in Atlanta. First spotted as Zev Love X (1989); created KMD with his brother Subroc and released Mr. Hood (Elektra) in 1991. The duo's second album, Black Bastards, was shelved for controversial cover art and shortly after, Subroc died in a car accident. Zev stole off to the shadows. In 1999, he returned as MF Doom with the album Operation Doomsday on Bobbito's Fondle 'Em label. Since then, Doom has cultivated alter-aliases such as Viktor Vaughn and King Geedorah, teamed up with Madlib on Madvillainy, and released three albums focused on his production. One of the few artists today who doesn't wear a mask.

What are your origins in hiphop? My recollection is 1983, third grade. It was almost like doodling on paper, you know, when you get bored in class or whatever.

Describe the new album, Mm..Food (Rhymesayers)? First off, the title's a play on MF Doom. But also, I tried to structure the album around food, each song has a title that has something to do with food. And yet while the song itself sounds like we're talking about food, there's some underlying innuendos, there's some other meaning there.

Your albums are highly conceptualized, like Viktor Vaughn is a character that you made two albums out of. Can you describe how you create an album? That initial inspiration. I'll notice something somewhere, a coincidence maybe, you know what I'm saying, and say to myself, "That'd be funny if…" Many albums have started with that phrase, "That'd be funny if…" So then I need songs to correlate with whatever that particular topic is. It's almost like the whole album is one song, and I just cut them up. Honestly, if it was up to me, it'd be one track on the motherfucker. That's how's I like to create albums, so you can listen to the whole shit and you don't have to skip through it really. That's the desired effect.

You tend to make tracks that are three minutes in length. Everybody's doing five-minute songs because that's the standard radio length. But I'm like, "Okay, if I cut out the bullshit, how long will it be?" If you cut out the choruses, and just flip verses. You know, rock three 16s [16 bars, the average length of a hiphop verse] in a row, with no choruses and let the beat rock a little at the end, it just ends up being about three minutes.

You work with some of the best producers who fly below radar. How close do you work with them to create the rhythms? Everybody I work with I'm pretty close to. I would never ask somebody I never met before to just send me a beat. It's kind of mechanical, a lot of things people do nowadays. It's bad enough that people use computers to make beats. It's like, "come on man, come to the studio and let's vibe." When I met Madlib, for instance, it was like I met a brother. Like, where've you been? We got right at it like two children. You know when you see two little kids that just met, the way they automatically get along with each other. Like, do you want to play? It was just like that. But honestly, being a producer myself, it's like I'm chasing my tail sometimes. So when I have someone else to come up with some hot shit, it's cool. I don't have to think about the beat, or anything about the technical aspects of the beat. And I can put 100 percent on my MC shit. And that's where a lot of my illest joints are coming from right now. I tell them to give me the weirdest beat they could possibly drop, that no one else could rip, because I love a challenge.

Describe genius. Striving for perfection. Constantly striving, geniuses are the few that just keep going, they don't ever stop to see what people are thinking.

Describe your relationship to your art. Creativity is a funny thing. I wish I had more control over it. It's like a flower, it only blooms here and there, the conditions have to be right. It's a weird thing to tap into, usually I wait for it. Like how when the sun shows us it's almost springtime, you know you need to plant those seeds, I can feel something is coming my way. And just like, if you don't water that seed or don't even plant it, nothing's gonna come up. I try to have my mind and my body conditioned for when creativity says, "I got this for you," I'm there, I'm ready and I got my pen and pad, too.

What have you learned of the artist's struggle to survive? I started in this game professionally as an adolescent at 18. That's the time when you're kinda thrown out of the nest anyway. So I wasn't thinking too much about surviving, I just wanted to make the music sound fat. Me and my brother were partners, so we tried to keep it like we were 10 years old still. In this game, there's many snakes. You have cats that don't have your best interests at heart, but once you see that, you learn from it and make sure no one takes advantage of you again. So nowadays, I make sure there's no middlemen involved. Everybody involved in a project from start to end is a b-boy straight up. B-boy or b-girl.

MF Doom performs on Weds., Nov. 24 at B.B. King Blues Club, 237 W. 42nd St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), 212-997-4144; 8, $17, $15.50.