MF Doom featuring Big Benn Klingon: Expektoration…Live

MF Doom featuring Big Benn Klingon: Expektoration…Live
Masked rapper, MF Doom has delighted audiences with his seemingly never ending flow of non sequitur for the past two decades or so. Because of his longevity, it is no surprise that Expektoration…Live is not his first live offering but it is his first live album recorded in his home state of New York. In the nearly one hour live performance, MF Doom runs through classic material from his solo debut Operation: Doomsday all the way through his more modern catalog.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Expektoration…Live contains no tracks from Doom’s most recent offering Born Like This. The album was arguably Doom’s most successful, actually appearing on the Billboard charts yet the crowd is not treated to a performance of “Gazzillion Ear”. But for old school Doom fans, Expektoration…Live delivers classic Doom.
The beginning of the album is heavy on Mm.. Food selections. It kicks off with “Hoe Cakes” followed by “Kon Queso”, “Kon Karne”, “One Beer”, “Beef Rap”, and “Vomitspit” before Doom finally breaks out some Madvillain material. Doom rambles through “Accordion”, “Meat Grinder”, “All Caps”, “Curls”, and “Figuro” before closing out ACT I with the rare track “People Places and Things”.
The second act of the album is a quick six song encore. The encore starts off with classic tracks from Doom’s debut album, Operation: Doomsday. Doom spits “Go With the Flow”, “Doomsday”, “Hey”, and “Rhymes Like Dimes” before closing the album with “Change the Beat” from Vaudeville Villain and “The Fine Print” from Take Me to Your Leader.
With the amount of classic material Doom has it is hard to criticize the songs performed on Expektoration…Live but what you can criticize is the song selection. I, for one, would be pissed if I went to see MF Doom and he played nothing off of Danger Doom. In the end, no song played during the show was released after 2004. Is it just that Doom has not changed his set list since then or does he think that his fans are not interested in anything he has released in the last half-decade plus?
But if your biggest complaint from the album is not about what Doom played but what he didn’t play, says a lot about the album. For those of us not lucky enough to have seen Doom live, Expektoration…Live gives us a rare look inside a Doom performance.
Rating: 9.0/10
MP3: MF Doom “Hoe Cakes (Live)”
Buy: iTunes or Insound!