Radiohead is one of the most historically respected bands of all time. Their influence across rock, pop, and even hip-hop shows up through sampling and by emulating their songwriting. The last thing you might initially expect is to hear Kanye West, Pharrell, and Lupe Fiasco rap over one of their songs on “Us Placers“.
However, that influence wasn’t just one way. Though it might not be immediately evident, they’re on the record for admiring arguably the greatest underground rap star of all time, MF DOOM. Back in January 2021, Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke paid tribute to the late icon. Above all else, he marveled at how incredible he was at stitching words together. In hip-hop and all of music, he hadn’t heard anything so transformative before. Then, he linked the 2009 track “Gazzillion Ear“. Both Yorke and bandmate Jonny Greenwood worked with him on the remix and for the 2011 record “Retarded Fren“.
“I am so sad to hear MF Doom’s passing. He was a massive inspiration to so many of us, changed things,” Yorke tweeted. “For me the way he put words was often shocking in it’s genius, using stream of consciousness in a way i’d never heard before.”
How MF Doom Inspired Radiohead and So Many Other Influential Artists of the 21st Century
Additionally, back in 2013, Thom Yorke told Dazed that DOOM was his favorite rapper. “Ultimately to me it’s not rapping at all, it’s poetry. The way he freeforms his verses and puts it all together, I don’t think anyone else quite does it like that,” the Radiohead frontman shared.
“I don’t necessarily like a lot of the beats, but he’s always amazing. ‘Guvnor’ was my single of 2012. It’s genius, that tune.
On the other side of the spectrum from Radiohead is Playboi Carti. Though he may not be the lyrical marvel that MF DOOM was, he raps with a lot of the same color and imagination stylistically. Still, when he made a reference to him on Whole Lotta Red in 2020, it threw a lot of people by surprise, his friends included.
That fact made Carti extremely giddy to share with his friends. As he told MARVIN Magazine in 2021, he was anxiously waiting to see if DOOM ever heard the lyric.
“I was more hype than anything. He’s alive to hear this s**t boy. I couldn’t wait for DOOM to pop out his shell and shout out Playboi Carti. I ain’t even do it for him to shout me out, I just did it to show older people who hear me. Yeah, I f**k with Doom, feel me. I love Doom,” he told journalist Yoh Phillips.
Photo by Scott Dudelson/Getty Images
The post The Underground Hip-Hop Legend That Quietly Inspired Radiohead for Years appeared first on VICE.
