Album Review: Expektoration (Live) by MF Doom

While the masked rapper has been known to send lip-syncing “Doomposters” to his gigs in his place, MF Doom fans can rest assured that this live album features the real deal. Anyone who bought the limited edition of MM..Food? has the video proof, as much of this album is an audio rip of that package’s bonus DVD. Redundancy aside, this is a fantastic show fans won’t mind revisiting.

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Part of the appeal of a live album is that it's raw, real, truthful-- musicians performing without the safety net or assistance of a studio. So it's unusual to be confronted with one, and the first question that comes to mind is, "Is this really a live performance at all?" DOOM has a purported tendency to send phony "Doomposters" to perform in his place at shows-- and a reputation as a terrible performer when he does show up-- so he must have titanium balls to even consider putting out a concert album. So Expektoration's validity has been called into question, particularly since it sounds so much better than his other concert release, 2005's Live from Planet X.

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MF Doom, a.k.a. Doom, has been dogged by controversy since it was discovered that at some shows, it sometimes wasn’t even him behind his iconic mask. You couldn’t see his face, so how did you know who was up there bouncing around? Whether intended to dispel any such concerns or not, Doom’s Expektoration offers up a complete and blistering live set which should be welcome to his legions of fans.

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Take the release of DOOM’s new live album Expektoration as a reminder to buy his earlier albums. Not that it isn’t a good performance; with audio that sounds like most of it was taken from the soundboard, and some crowd noise thrown in to demonstrate that several members of the audience were singing along and enjoying themselves, Expektoration provides a rare document of DOOM sounding energetic and gregarious over his songs. The setlist, heavy on material from MM..

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