NehruvianDOOM - NehruvianDOOM

by Jamison Murphy

NehruvianDOOM brings bizarro rap legend MF DOOM and the preternaturally gifted teenage rapper Bishop Nehru together for a short, occasionally brilliant album. As heard on previous releases, DOOM’s hazed-out production clearly influenced Nehru intensely, and his work on the entirely DOOM-produced NehruvianDOOM sounds less like a collaborative experiment than a natural progression of his earlier work.While Nehru frequently goes after heavy themes, often delving into autobiography with lyrics about life as a very young rising rapper, the standout moments on NehruvianDOOM show both Nehru and DOOM at their most playful. The jazzy, melodic “Mean the Most,” with its loose, meandering structure, is a clear highlight, as is album closer “Disastrous,” which features a classic, dense verse from DOOM.While NehruvianDOOM is successful in many places, it isn’t as groundbreaking and doesn’t quite hold together as well as DOOM’s best work. The album’s loose thematic ties, from the frequent samples about spirituality to the self-referential mentor-mentee relationship between Nehru and DOOM, don’t give the album the cohesiveness it aspires to. NehruvianDOOM refuses to let you forget that it is the meeting of a seasoned hip hop weirdo with an up-and-coming hip hop weirdo, and as promising and often successful as the collaboration is, neither artist seems to have moved from their comfort zones.Check out "Mean the Most" in the YouTube embed below!

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPN3uHiw1g[/embed]