Happy 15th Anniversary to DANGERDOOM’s The Mouse And The Mask, originally released October 11, 2005.
Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton and Daniel “MF DOOM” Dumile were on such a hot streak in the mid ’00s that they made sponsored content sound fly. With the release of The Mouse And The Mask 15 years ago, the emcee and producer combined to form DANGERDOOM. Teaming with the Cartoon Network and Epitaph Records, DANGERDOOM appealed to fans of the realm of adult-skewing animation, as well as dope hip-hop. The Mouse And The Mask isn’t ranked amongst the top tier of their respective discographies, but it is still fun and irreverent in ways that few hip-hop albums ever bother to attempt.
When The Mouse And The Mask hit the shelves, the Metal-Faced Villain was about a year removed from MM.. Food (2004) and still basking in the serious acclaim he had earned during an incredible run from 2003 to 2004. During the brief lull, fans were clamoring for more material from the underground hero/rap recluse.
Meanwhile, Danger Mouse was in the midst of his rapid ascent. Riding high from the Grey Album remix project, he was receiving raves for his production on Gorillaz’ Demon Days (2005), released just months before. After breaking through as a hip-hop producer, he was also being enlisted to team with artists across many genres.
DOOM and Danger Mouse first worked together on “Social Distortion,” a track featured on Prince Po’s first solo album, The Slickness (2003). The pair got along and decided to continue working together. DOOM appeared as a guest on another two Danger Mouse productions (including Gorillaz’ “November Has Come” and a remix of Zero 7’s “Somersault”), establishing solid chemistry.
Eventually they had an idea to record an album of tracks inspired by the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming. For those of you who haven’t gotten blasted out of your mind and channel-surfed during the small hours of the night, Adult Swim is an animation block made up of often experimental and absurdist programming, each episode roughly 10 minutes in length. Danger Mouse had already forged a relationship with the network, producing music for the channel earlier in his career. After working with the president/creative director of programming, the pair hammered out a deal by which the Cartoon Network would help sponsor the album, contribute vocal talent, and promote the album on the channel accordingly.
Since Danger Mouse was based in the Los Angeles area and DOOM lived in Atlanta at the time, the two had to get creative about how to get music to each other. This was during the days before e-mailing beats and finished songs became standard operating procedure, so Danger Mouse would have to mail DOOM a beat CD to pick through. Eventually they cobbled together enough material for The Mouse And The Mask, a celebration not only of Adult Swim and the Cartoon Network, but also cartoons of all sorts.
As advertised, many of the characters from the various Adult Swim programs make frequent appearances throughout the album. Elements of Adult Swim’s heaviest hitters at the time, like Aqua Teen Hunger, Sealab 2021, and The Brak Show, receive prominent placements. Danger Mouse at times incorporates vocals from episodes of these various shows. At other points, the voice actors appear, in character, providing running commentary throughout the songs. As the album progresses, Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force leaves a series of increasingly desperate and angry messages. Meatwad from the same show later demonstrates his rapping skills, performing the first verse from DOOM’s “Beef Rapp” from MM… Food in a particularly inspired choice.
On the mic, DOOM structures his rhymes like many of his previous albums, often only kicking one relatively lengthy verse per song. There’s not a lot of deeper meanings to be found in many of the rhymes, with DOOM flexing the free association style he’d become known for. Danger Mouse digs in the crates for his source material for his eclectic production, drawing from relatively obscure TV and movie score composers. He also pulls relatively often from sound library records, containing what were designed to be stock music as well as isolated instruments.
The result is a dope, but occasionally slight, album. Enthusiasm for The Mouse And The Mask really depends on your appetite for Adult Swim programming. As someone who was very much into cartoons throughout my life and as someone who bought a bunch of DVD sets of various Adult Swim shows around that time, I appreciated the general goofiness of the endeavor. It often sounds like DOOM was winging it, but the project holds together on the strength of the pair’s ample talents.
On tracks like “El Chupe Nibre” and “Sofa King,” DOOM uses the cartoons as a starting point for inspiration, and then lets his pen and sharp mind take it from there. On the album-opening former track, after throwing a few barbs at his old crew the Monsta Island Czars (“Once joined a rap clique – Midgets Into Crunk”), DOOM demonstrates his effortless flow, rapping, “What we have here is a failure to communicate / If you gonna hate, might at least get your rumors straight / About DOOM the Great, a lot more confident / Came a long way since the days we had to rhyme for rent.”
Occasionally, DOOM addresses the theme of the album quite literally. “A.T.H.F. (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)” features the Metal-Faced Villain running down the characters that appear in the stoner classic, along with the general premise of the show. “Perfect Hair” is an ode to Perfect Hair Forever, a surreal and relatively short-lived series on the Cartoon Network that featured vocal work by DOOM himself (as a giraffe named Sherman). Danger Mouse loops up a slice of jazzy funk, as the electric guitar meshes with an airy flute to create the most mellow track on the album.
“Space Ho’s” features DOOM paying homage to Space Ghost Coast To Coast, the late-show parody that kickstarted the idea for the adult-skewing animated programming over a decade before The Mouse And The Mask’s release. DOOM raps about taking control of the show from the animated host, talking to trash to co-hosts Brak and Zorak, and asking suggestive questions to guests Judy Jetson and Futurama’s Leela. Space Ghost appears on the track intro and outro, expressing incredulous disbelief at the proceedings.
When not rhyming about the various Adult Swim programming, DOOM occasionally delves into unique subject matter. “Vats of Urine” is, as the title suggests, a nearly two-minute description of various urinary functions, which DOOM explores because “everybody talking ’bout pistols, gats is boring.” Bookending the in-depth discussion of the many properties of piss, the Moonenites of the aforementioned Aqua Teen Hunger Force deliver their own belligerent commentary. The song also features an expert jazzy sample flip of Cherry People’s “Girl On the Subway.”
Not all the guests are of the animated variety. Danger Mouse and DOOM bring in a trio of outside guests, all of which work well. “Old School,” featuring Talib Kweli, is one of the best tracks on The Mouse And The Mask. Danger Mouse freaks Keith Mansfield’s “Funky Fanfare,” a recognizable TV and movie theme music during the late ’60s and ’70s; Quentin Tarantino has used it in films the Kill Bill and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Kweli comes correct leading off the track, penning a loving tribute to the importance of cartoons in his life. “And I might be bugging, but it seems to me that cartoons be realer than reality TV,” he raps. “They inspire my decision to be open and listen / But folks got it all twisted, like a yoga position.”
“Benzie Box” features DOOM getting busy over a slice of synth-heavy ’80s funk, with Cee-Lo crooning the track’s chorus. The track is one of the earliest recorded teams-up between Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo, who would strike the jackpot with Gnarls Barkley the following year.
Meanwhile, “The Mask” serves as DOOM’s first appearance on a track with Ghostface Killah, a pairing that made too much sense to not happen. The song eventually led to DOOM producing material for Ghost, and the two announcing the Swift And Changeable collaboration project, which still has yet to see the light of day.
Danger Mouse often gets bizarre behind the boards. “Basket Case” is downright haunting, as Danger Mouse loops up a healthy chunk of Norwegian jazz fusion, sampling “Misty Canyon” by Sven Liabek, while DOOM rhymes from the perspective of an imprisoned madman (represented by Harvey Birdman). Tracks like “No Names” and “Crosshairs” feature slower grooves, as Danger Mouse shows his skills by manipulating the aforementioned sound library records. DOOM’s winding rhymes work particularly well on the latter, as he raps, “Come clean, a bunch of dumb mean cream puffs / A keen drum machine buff, who fiends for more green stuff.”
“Mince Meat” is another of the stronger entries on the album and sounds like it would fit in on many of DOOM’s earlier albums. Danger Mouse digs deep here, putting together a slithering East Asian-influenced track. He also samples vocals from the ultra-obscure Klondike Kat, a cartoon short featured as part of the short-lived The Beagles animated show in the late ‘60s. DOOM delivers his best rhymes on the album throughout the track, rapping, “Tap ya toe, grime and strapped for dough / Rap for show, to let the whippersnappers know / Sucks to be them, now pass that loot / Up under the tux, he wore a hazmat suit.”
Cartoon Network and Epitaph have released a lot of “supplemental” material since The Mouse And The Mask dropped. First was the Occult Hymns EP, which the network released through its website in 2006. It included some material that didn’t make the finished album, such as the extremely dope “Korn Dogz.” There were also several remixes/re-recordings/sequels to other tracks, such as “El Chupe Nibre,” “Sofa King,” and “Perfect Hair II,” which turned out to be superior to the original versions. In 2017, DOOM’s Metal Face imprint released a super-deluxe version of the album, which added all of Occult Hymns and two more bonus cuts, including “Mad Nice” featuring Black Thought.
Ever since its initial release, DOOM has spoken about reuniting with Danger Mouse to record a sequel to the project, this time writing from the perspective of the cartoon characters, instead of about them. Sadly, the follow-up seems to have gone the way of so many scrapped DOOM projects. In 2016, DOOM started a separate partnership with Cartoon Network, promising to release a song a week for 15 weeks through the network’s website. However, that also fizzled after a few weeks.
I haven’t watched much Adult Swim in years. The shows I liked have either been cancelled, gotten way too weird for my tastes, or a combination of the two. Still I can enjoy DOOM and Danger Mouse cutting loose for a bit, and hearing voice actors at the top of their games absolutely sell the premise. And who knows if the parties involved will ever revisit the project? A decade and a half later, the time might now be right for a Danger Mouse-produced Meatwad solo album.
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