Czarface/MF Doom: Czarface Meets Metal Face [SILVER AGE]

Why you'll love it

This Silver Age LP carries the full crossover in its comic-book jacket. It went to No. 1 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart, and "Nautical Depth" and "Bomb Thrown" led the way as singles.

This edition

• Silver Age edition
• Comic-book cover art

About the album

Every comic fan knows the joy of a crossover issue, when two heroes from different universes finally share a page. Czarface, the group built from Wu-Tang's Inspectah Deck and the Boston duo 7L & Esoteric, had always presented its albums like comics, so teaming up with MF DOOM, hip hop's most famous masked villain, was the obvious plot twist.

The Czar-Keys (7L, Jeremy Page and Todd Spadafore) supply dusty, sample-heavy beats full of cartoon clips and hard drums. "Meddle with Metal" and "Captain Crunch" let DOOM and Esoteric trade dense, playful rhymes, "Phantoms" brings in Open Mike Eagle, "Astral Traveling" features Vinnie Paz, and "Nautical Depth" adds Blacastan. Kendra Morris turns up too.

Critics were warm, with a 75 on Metacritic, and it became the last album DOOM put out in his lifetime, which gives it a special place on any shelf. The villain, as ever, gets the best lines.

Also at Kops: more Czarface on vinyl · browse Hip Hop / R&B

Tracklist

Listen

On Silver Age (cat# SIL003-LP), the 2018 album.