There are few releases in hip-hop history with as much mystery behind them as KMD’s second full-length, Black Bastards. The album, whose cover boldly depicted a cartoon “Sambo” being hanged, didn’t even receive the insult of being shelved or pushed back by Elektra Records upon its completion in 1994. Instead, it was outright refused, with very little above-board explanation as to the reason, or even much of an apology, as they ushered the group’s leader out the door.

And while the aftermath of Elektra’s decision caused the group’s only remaining member unimaginable distress, the album didn’t stay buried forever. Years later—much like the artist formerly known as Zev Love X, who would shed his old name, image and vocal style and emerge as MF Doom—the album would be resurrected and released on multiple labels.

But let’s start at the beginning. KMD—sometimes written “K.M.D.” but not always—was, at its core, two brothers: Daniel Dumile [Zev Love X, aka MF Doom] and the two-years-younger Dingilizwe Dumile [DJ Subroc, aka Raheem or Heem]. Their family moved around Manhattan and the outskirts of New York City growing up, although they spent most of their high school years in Long Island. Even though they were separated by two years, Doom says, “It always seemed like me and Sub was twins. Or it might have even seemed that he was older. Like his spirit was older.”

Doom, who was born in the U.K. shortly before his family moved to the U.S., says, “We grew up in a lot of places. We went to school in Manhattan and in Mt. Vernon [NY]. Every year we was in a different town. Manhattan was always the focal point, though, because we were either going to school there or cutting school to go there.”

Aside from Manhattan, one geographical locale that had significance to the Dumile brothers was Long Beach, NY—a town technically in Long Island, but just outside of the Queens borough line. Importantly for their musical career, it was also a stone’s throw from Far Rockaway, the home of 3rd Bass’ MC Serch. Doom says that they were firmly planted in Long Beach when he was in junior high and early high school, and they also kept roots there throughout the mid-‘90s.

Early photo of Zev Love X (Photo by Pete Nice)

In Doom’s mid-teens [Sub’s early-to-mid teens], the brothers were into graffiti as much as music, and the decision about their group name—instead of the larger ESP [“Every Sucka Pays”] crew with whom they were connected—flowed directly out of a can of Krylon. “With KMD, those three letters just sound great, the way they ring together in that order,” Doom explains. “When we first figured out the name, that’s all we wanted. Then we built it from there. It was really more of a graffiti crew at first. It just looks ill when you write it.”

He continues, “At first, it stood for ‘Kausin’ Much Damage.’ Then it was more like, ‘Kause in a Much Damaged Society.’ Like a positive cause [Author’s note: See the bottom of their 1991 single “Peachfuzz” as well as the upper left of their debut album Mr. Hood for the use of this phrase]. We used the letters to make sense of what we was trying to do, musically, at any given time.”

Similar logic went into the elder Dumile’s first stage name: Zev Love X. He explains, “I started with X and also liked Z and V. Then I added ‘Love’ in the middle. It was always about the illest combination of letters, and not many people used Z or V in graffiti back then. X always posed a question. In algebra, it was a mystery. And it also spelled out ‘X Evolvez,’ backwards.”

Although visuals and language consumed their young minds, they also went beyond graffiti and tags. “We started making actual music in about 1986, just hooking up double tape-decks,” Doom explains. “I used to DJ, too, but I always took hold of the vocal aspect. Subroc had more of the technical side sewed down.”

They also met a future rhyme partner, Onyx [Alonzo Hodge], around this time. He was a neighborhood acquaintance and appeared as a secondary MC on their first album, Mr. Hood, but he was not on Black Bastards. “He was my man from down the street,” Doom says. “He used to build and bug out with us back in ’86. Everyone else in our neighborhood wanted to have beef, and he was the only dude who would talk to us. We had the same views and ideas about life. He was in between me and Sub, age-wise.”

The last important piece to the KMD music puzzle came into play during the mid-to-late 80s as well, in Long Beach. Doom recalls, “I met [MC] Serch there around ‘85. Back then it was pretty basic: everybody didn’t rhyme like they do now. If you were an MC or did beats or were a DJ, there were only a few of you. So you stuck together, or eventually met each other. Serch used to do talent shows, I think I met him at one of those.”

“One day, probably in ‘88, Serch came through and was like, ‘Yo, I got a record deal,’” Doom continues. “He asked us if we wanted to be on a track.”

That track ended up being 3rd Bass’ smash single “The Gas Face,” which appeared in 1989 on Def Jam and featured Zev as a guest on vocals, alongside Serch and his 3rd Bass rhyme partner, Pete Nice. The entire song was, in fact, based on a term that Zev himself had coined. With the addition of being in the song’s video, he was quickly vaulted into the public eye, despite still being in high school.

Pete Nice, who would go on to co-manage KMD through the mid-90s, says, “Serch met the KMD guys before I did, through 3rd Bass’ dancers, Ahmed and Otis. They lived in Long Beach, too. They were all in the GYP, Get Yours Posse. Those guys [Zev and Subroc] were very young when ‘Gas Face’ was out. They were both at a lot of our sessions for The Cactus Album, and then they toured with us after the album came out. So it was definitely a family thing; they were like our little brothers. And they were like Siamese twins with each other. Zev and Sub were so connected.”

After the impact of “The Gas Face,” record labels were more than open to the idea of a KMD album. And while Zev was the leader, at least as far as most people could see, Subroc remained a strong, silent partner. “He was just quieter than me, I guess,” Doom says. “Subroc was usually the guy to fix tracks after I had left them half-done. He’d get it tight and set the pace. He was my partner in crime. And on the mic, he started coming with his MC shit right around the time of the first album [Mr. Hood, in 1991].”

Doom explains, “’Gas Face’ was the first thing that we had ever put out, but the KMD music we were working on was piling up. Even so, we weren’t necessarily looking for a deal.” Nonetheless, by late 1990 they had one, signed to Elektra by hip-hop A&R impresario Dante Ross—a man who already had an impressive history in the game, having worked at RUSH / Def Jam [with 3rd Bass, among many others] and Tommy Boy before landing at the major label. He would go on to sign some of the most influential rap acts of the early 90s, including Brand Nubian, Pete Rock & CL Smooth and Leaders of the New School.

During the first album, KMD was managed by Serch’s and Pete’s R.I.F. Productions. “It wasn’t a super serious company or anything,” Pete explains. “But we had a lot of connections in the industry, so we figured why not?” He explains that it wasn’t a tough sell to get Dante Ross to pick up KMD at Elektra, and the group’s initial advance was raised slightly by some interest shown by Def Jam during the shopping process.

Zev Love X, Subroc and Pete Nice at Greene Street Studios (Photo courtesy of Pete Nice)

“I first met Doom and Subroc when they were kids, really,” remembers Dante Ross. “Doom was in that post-teenage, almost-a-grown-up age, still young. And Subroc was a kid, honestly. They were both really endearing and charming. I met them through 3rd Bass, probably through Serch. They really were like twins, they were so close.”

He adds, “By the time I was at Elektra and building the label’s hip-hop roster, I got to know KMD even better. We dug each other as people, and I loved their music. I guess you could say that they were somewhere in between Brand Nubian and De La Soul [two artists with whom Ross had worked].”

“Honestly, we didn’t talk to anybody over at Elektra besides Dante,” recalls Doom. “He was a regular dude. He made beats, too, and he was open to the creative direction that we were going in back then. We had total creative control making that first album.” The song “Peachfuzz” was their first single, and the first time that Sub and Doom had ever been on wax under their own group name.

One of the people who helped KMD harness their musical ideas early-on was John Gamble, a friend of Dante Ross’ and a partner in the Stimulated Dummies production crew and studio, with Ross and Geeby Dajani. Gamble engineered the entire Mr. Hood album, which he says was initially made—over the course of four or five months—as a full album demo. These first recordings were completed at the Dummies’ SD50 Studio, located in the basement of the Westbeth artist’s building where Gamble lived. After that, with Elektra’s green-light, final album tracks were completed at Calliope Studios, after another two months of work.

Gamble says, of the Mr. Hood sessions: “At first, I had no idea how the stuff they were looping was going to make any sense. But then I saw the genius of those tracks, as I watched them unfold. They were truly on some next level shit, even at a young age. It was all mapped out in their heads.”

“Doom was much more verbal at first, Subroc didn’t talk much,” Gamble recalls. “Although Sub got to be more outgoing by the end of Mr. Hood. Sub was more of the technical guy. I seem to remember that, more often than not, it was Sub who had the records and ideas of what was going to be sampled. They also never really argued about anything, or even had conflicting ideas about the music. Maybe they had already had those discussions before I saw them, but I never heard them fight about anything. Those were the best and most fun sessions I have ever done, to this day.”

Doom explains what “Produced by KMD” meant back in the Mr. Hood era: “Me and Sub would do whatever we could do. It wasn’t necessarily sectioned off. It was really just for fun, in a lot of ways. I would dig in the crates, find the loops, and come up with a concept. Then, I’d usually get close to finishing it, but I’d be too lazy. I never liked messing with computers or programming drum machines and samplers. I left a lot of beats half-done. And Sub would come in and finish a lot of them. Onyx was only vocals, he didn’t fuck with the music at all. He added a lot of humor to what we were doing. His was an ill angle.”

He also points out that—in addition to behind-the-scenes production and technical work—Subroc started rhyming on Mr. Hood, notably on the song “Subroc’s Mission.” “That shit is retarded,” says Doom.

Mr. Hood came out in 1991 and featured three singles: “Peachfuzz,” “Nitty Gritty,” and “Who Me?”—album artwork and single covers showed a cartoon Sambo image, drawn by Doom. It was a startling and evocative graphic, and it would come back to haunt him less than three years later.

Back of “Who Me?” single

Mr. Hood was successful, at least for a debut album by an abstract-leaning trio who made catchy music, but whose lyrics were too complicated for cross-over smashes. “I thought the album was promoted well,” Doom recalls. “And the wreck [praise/sales] we caught off it was good enough wreck for me.” Most parties involved agree that the album sold in the neighborhood of 130,000 to 150,000 units.

“Mr. Hood actually drove me crazy, because they did the demo in our studio,” Ross says. “So I couldn’t even use my own spot for like three or four months. But besides that, I never liked the way that the record sounded. I thought the drums were funny on a lot of the tracks. There was a lot of ‘demo-itis’ on that record. Maybe they wanted it to sound lo-fi. Either way, there was a lot of innocence on that record, because the guys were pretty innocent back then.”

Mr. Hood album ad, August 1991

“Their image and lifestyle was definitely much different on the first album,” Pete Nice recalls. “They were both devout Muslims back then, in 1991. They were still kids. We would go on the road and they would have their prayer rugs during Ramadan. They didn’t drink or do any drugs.”

Despite Ross’ feelings about the sonics of the record, and with only moderate apprehension from Elektra higher-ups as a result of the sales numbers, Ross convinced the label to green-light a second album. He explains, “We didn’t recoup on the first record, so when it came time to talk about another one, the label wasn’t sure. I convinced them that they should, but they set the budget at $200,000, which was a lot less than Mr. Hood.”

KMD toured with 3rd Bass and other like-minded artists after the release of Mr. Hood, working on their follow-up album whenever they could for the next two years. “We were on the road a lot and we were always working on stuff,” Doom says. “We always had the [Akai] MPC with us. The road was the most fun shit and it was even better for working on music, because we were there with so many different musical minds.”

Doom and Sub had added new friends to their extended family during the Mr. Hood era. Most notably the Constipated Monkey crew, including vocalist Kurious, whom Doom met via 3rd Bass in 1989. “We had been down with them for a while,” Doom explains. “They were from Uptown and they had a similar thing going on to what we were doing. So we met up and joined forces, the way culture grows. It’s like plants. Kurious, Bobbito [Garcia], Tone Greer, those are my fams.”

Doom says that they started recording the follow-up to Mr. Hood, “Upstate, at Dr. York’s studio, where the photo on the back of [MF Doom’s] Operation Doomsday [from 1999, on Fondle ‘Em Records] was taken.” Dr. Malachi York is the controversial leader of the Nuwaubian / Nubian Islamic Hebrew Mission spiritual movement and the Holy Tabernacle Ministries. York and his ministry operated out of several locations starting in the late 60s, including Brooklyn, Liberty, NY (near the Catskills, about 90 miles from Manhattan), and, starting in 1993, rural Georgia.

In addition to being a religious and spiritual figurehead, Dr. York was also a recording artist, beginning in the early 80s. Doom and Sub had an association with him during their teenage years and, according to many accounts, followed his spiritual teachings. “Doom and Sub would go and visit Dr. York in Brooklyn on the weekends,” Ross recalls. “He had a lot of influence on them.”

Dr. York New York album cover, 1986

Demo recording locations for KMD’s second album, which would be known as Black Bastards, included multiple spots: 4-track demos at home; MPC tryouts on the road; and hip-hop hotspots like Chung King and Calliope in Manhattan. Clearly the location wasn’t important, and inspiration came from just about everywhere. “Sometimes we would just start recording in a big studio, staying in there all day. Music would just come to us, chilling and digging in the crates,” Doom says.

As they began their sophomore effort, another musical collaborator entered the mix: engineer Rich Keller. A jazz bassist who first entered the hip-hop game engineering the Beatnuts at Chung King Studios a year or two earlier, he was brought into the Black Bastards project by Pete Nice. “I was there pretty much from the beginning of those sessions,” Keller says.

Although many people reasonably assumed that final tracks for the album were recorded at Chung King—since that is the only studio listed on the album’s sole single [“What A Niggy Know”]—Keller says that almost every song on the album was actually recorded at his home studio in Livonia, NJ.

“I had full set-up there,” he explains. “It was a well-known spot. Onyx [the Queens-based group, not the ex-KMD member], Run-DMC, and Wu-Tang would record there later on. I would always go to other studios to mix records, we only tracked music and vocals at my place. When KMD was recording, a lot of times they would just crash at my house, for days at a time. We worked very steadily on the album and were very productive over that winter, late 1992 into the spring of ’93. They came with the music in their samplers and we’d build the records. I helped with technical shit, and sometimes I’d play bass or a guitar lick to fill something in, to connect sections. But it was Doom and Sub who had all the ideas.”

“What impressed me about those guys more than anything was Doom’s passion,” Keller adds. “He lived the music, every song was a proclamation that he had to get out. I was inspired by his dedication to the music.”

Keller, who had just met the duo in 1992, has an interesting recollection about Subroc, who was clearly coming out of his shell by the Black Bastards era: “Subroc was different than Doom; he was more animated and outspoken. He acted more like the rapper of the group during our sessions. I know Doom was the main MC, but Subroc acted like he was. He had the machismo and had more attitude. Doom was more about the music and ‘the mission’ when I was with them.”

Doom describes the transition from Mr. Hood to what would become Black Bastards in the following way: “Mr. Hood was like all the ideas we had from 1986 through 1991, when I was 17 and Subroc was 15. We both grew up a lot between [when Doom was] 18 and 21, being on the road, and having a career in music. The truth doesn’t change, and we were dealing with the truth. The messages don’t change, they just sound different. Maybe our attitudes towards things, or towards women, changed. We both had children by the time that we were making Black Bastards, too.”

By Black Bastards, Subroc’s voice—which was quieter on Mr. Hood—appeared on multiple tracks, solo and duo, including “Gimme!” “It Sounded Like A Roc,” “Suspended Animation,” the single “What A Nigga Know” and the bonus track, “Q3 119.” He was 19 years old, and as an adult he started to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his older brother, becoming a more front-and-center part of the group.

Pete Nice agrees: “A major change with Black Bastards was Subroc coming to the forefront. He rhymed and did a lot more production. Sub was very involved with Mr. Hood, but he wasn’t heard as much. By Black Bastards, he had come into his own. He had a big influence on the sound. In fact, he was so quiet during Mr. Hood that it was surprising to hear him rhyme. He was still young, but his lyrics were strong. He and Doom built Black Bastards together.”

“I think a lot of the musical ideas on Black Bastards were Sub’s,” says Ross. “He was a boy genius, extremely insightful and intelligent. And there was an immense change with the guys in-between records, both as people and as artists. They were hanging out in the city a lot, often with the Constipated Monkeys, and they were experimenting with a lot of mind-altering drugs. Like, a lot of them. Even so, I still felt good about what might become of the record.”

Pete Nice also mentions the marked change in the Dumile brothers between albums: “They had been really devout and serious before. By the time they got to Black Bastards, they were still Muslims, but they were drinking 40s. And musically, things got more serious. Black Bastards was more dense with imagery and complexity. Mr. Hood was more straight-forward. They were becoming adults, and were also influenced by the developments of other groups they admired, like De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest and the Jungle Brothers. Doom had a pretty intense focus back in ’92 and ’93. I love both albums, but I like Black Bastards more. They were just getting better at what they were doing.”

When queried as to whether Black Bastards is an angry—or at least less innocent—album, Doom replies: “On Mr. Hood we did take a less aggressive approach. There was some of the same subject matter on Black Bastards, but we went at it a bit more aggressively. I guess you could say that. Either way, people had typecast us on Mr. Hood. To be honest, if I had wanted to come real angry with shit, I could have been much angrier than what you heard, considering what was going on in the world back then. There were still plenty of jokes and funny shit on Black Bastards, so I wouldn’t call it an angry album.”

One interesting side-note is Doom’s and Subroc’s obsession with one singular album, which was sampled multiple times on Black Bastards: ex-Last Poet Gylan Kain’s fiery, black power treatise The Blue Guerrilla [1970, Juggernaut Records]. “We used to listen to that album a lot, and it was ill,” Doom explains. “It matched a lot of funny stuff we was trying to say, and it helped us get our points across. That album was definitely an inspiration.”

Ross says that John Gamble hipped Doom and Sub to the album initially, and that they knew Kain’s son. Pete Nice was also aware of the Dumile brothers’ obsession with the album. “I think that their love for the Kain record helped make Black Bastards more intense,” he says. “Everything they were doing ended up having a double or triple meaning.”

After many recording locations, road miles and wild samples, Black Bastards was just about finished when an almost unthinkable tragedy struck. On April 23, 1993, Subroc was killed by an oncoming car as he was trying to cross the Long Island Expressway on foot. He was only 19 years old.

Still reeling from the tragedy two decades later, Doom recalls, “The album was almost completely done when he was killed. I had to finish off a couple things here and there, but it was really almost done. And the album was due, so I had to go right into it. I had no time. I had to just finish it.”

The Source, July 1993 issue

Keller agrees that the album was almost completed when Subroc died, and mentions that Doom was—understandably—in bad shape for some time afterwards, occasionally calling him or stopping by to borrow money, recording equipment or even pillows and bedding for his siblings. “He was trippin’ for a little while,” Keller says.

“I think some part of Doom was gone when Sub died,” says Ross. “Sub’s death, understandably, made Doom a very angry person.”

Pete recalls, “I remember that at Subroc’s wake, Doom set up a boombox right next to the casket and played pretty much the whole Black Bastards album. It was intense to hear it in that context.”

According to all accounts, Doom did not take excessive time to mourn. Even so, he worked slowly, finishing the album—which Keller says was mixed at Chung King and mastered at Masterdisk in Manhattan—by early 1994.

In April of ‘94, less than a year after Subroc’s tragic death, the first single, “What A Nigga Know [modified to “Niggy” for the radio version],” was released on Elektra. A video for the song was also shot and readied.

Advance cassettes for Black Bastards were circulated to press VIPs, and interviews for features about the album were completed with outlets including The Source and 4080, among others. The release date for the album was set and printed on Elektra marketing materials that were sent out to press and retail: May 3.

But, sadly, Subroc’s death turned out to be merely the first blow in a one-two punch that would force Doom into a deeper depression, and out of the public eye for several years.

“It was totally out of the blue,” Doom recalls. “‘What A Nigga Know’ was out and doing well, and we were at a session. We got a call from Elektra, they wanted to see us there at the office the next day for a meeting. I didn’t really think much about it, honestly.”

“We got there and they had the [cover] artwork proofs out on the table,” he continues. “There were a couple of people in the room, including one old dude I had never seen before. He was speaking on behalf of Elektra. It seemed like they had everything planned out already, like they knew how everything was going to end before we said anything. And they said they weren’t going to put the album out. They didn’t even want us to change the cover.” [Author’s note: The cover depicted their trademark Sambo character, this time being hung by a rope on a makeshift gallows]