The Chronicles of Doom: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast

A Variety best music book of 2024
A FLOOD best music book of 2024
A Clash best music book of 2024
A Mother Jones best book of 2024

＂In a career and life full of fictions, the truth--as this excellent, detailed biography makes clear--was often as mind-boggling [. . .] Hip-hop writer S.H. Fernando Jr. benefits from an insider’s understanding of the milieu and provides generous context.＂
--Kitty Empire, The Guardian

The definitive biography of MF DOOM, charting the reclusive and revered hip-hop artist’s life, career, and eventual immortality.

On December 31, 2020, the world was shocked to learn about the death of hip-hop legend MF DOOM. Born in London and raised in the suburban enclave of Long Beach, New York, Daniel Dumile Jr.’s love of cartoons and comic books would soon turn him into one of hip-hop’s most enigmatic, prolific, and influential figures.

Sweeping and definitive, The Chronicles of DOOM: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast recounts the rise, fall, redemption, and untimely demise of MF DOOM. Broken down into five sections: The Man, The Myth, The Mask, The Music, and The Legend, journalist S. H. Fernando, or SKIZ, chronicles the life of Daniel Dumile Jr., beginning in the house he grew up in in Long Beach, NY, into the hip-hop group KMD, onto the stage of his first masked show, through the countless collabs, and across the many different cities Daniel called home. Centering the music, SKIZ deftly lays out the history of east-coast rap against DOOM’s life story and dissects the personas, projects, tracks, and lyrics that led to his immortality.

Including exclusive interviews with those who worked closely with DOOM and providing an unknown, intimate, behind the scenes look into DOOM’s life, The Chronicles of DOOM is the definitive biography of MF DOOM, a supervillain on stage and hero to those who paid attention.

S.H. Fernando Jr., SKIZ, is a writer / Journalist whose byline has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and The Source. He currently lives in Baltimore, MD.