In the late 90s and 2000s, a New York rapper emerged with a familiar vocal cadence, though he was hidden behind a mask. This rapper created a brilliant persona as a supervillain. He leaned heavily into comic book villains and animated superhero shows for sound bites and references. He took on the name MF Doom, covering his face with a signature metal mask. The majority of his persona was based on Doctor Doom, but also on other Marvel Comics villains such as Destro and the Phantom of the Opera.

It didn’t take long for New York underground rap fans to pinpoint whose familiar voice this belonged to underneath the mask. MF Doom’s real name was Daniel Dumile. In the early 1990s, he performed under the name Zev Love X. Dumile was part of the rap group KMD, which stood for “Kausing Much Damage”, with his younger brother DJ Subroc. They made the group a trio, with another rapper by the name of Jade 1. Just before the rap group signed with Elektra Records, they replaced Jade 1 with a rapper going by the name Onyx The Birthstone Kid.

Together, they recorded two albums, with only one being released during their time together. Their debut album, Mr. Hood, was released in 1991. The album charted decently for a debut album from an unknown group. It peaked at No. 67 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Their lead single, “Peachfuzz”, peaked at No. 11 on the Hot Rap Songs chart. The follow-up single, “Who Me?” peaked at No. 19 on the chart.

The Tragic Death of DJ Subroc

In 1993, DJ Subroc and his brother formed another group called Monsta Island Czars. Additionally, he had taken up producing and produced tracks for his fellow Monsta Island collaborators. This group included artists such as 3rd Base, MF Grimm, and Kurious Jorge.

His original group, KDM, began recording their follow-up album in 1993. Tragically, before it was finished, Subroc was struck by a vehicle while attempting to cross the Nassau Expressway on Long Island in New York. Dumile wasn’t with his brother, only hearing about the incident later that same day. Following this tragedy, he stepped away from his rap career and experienced hardship. At one point, Dumile reported that he was nearly homeless and had been sleeping on benches on the streets of Manhattan. He then relocated to Atlanta in the mid-90s.

In 1999, Dumile secretly returned as MF Doom, a supervillain rapper. His brother’s death directly influenced this shift in direction. He began performing at open mics, freestyling without exposing his face. Eventually, he adopted a mask, inspired by the 2000 film Gladiator. He released his debut solo album, Operation: Doomsday, on October 19, 1999. The album became a minor hit, peaking at No. 17 on the Independent Albums chart and No. 24 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Chart. Soon after, the previously unreleased KMD follow-up album was released in 2000.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, MF Doom released multiple solo albums and collaboration albums, either under the name MF Doom or under a handful of aliases and variations. He became a critically acclaimed and notorious underground rapper. In October 2020, Doom was hospitalized in Leeds, England, due to respiratory issues. He died on October 31, 2020, due to a reaction to his blood pressure medication. His family announced his death two months later, on December 31.

Photo by Ross Gilmore/Redferns

The post How the Tragic Death of His Little Brother in 1993 Launched MF Doom’s Supervillain Persona Six Years Later appeared first on VICE.

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In February 2023, South African rapper Kiernan “AKA” Forbes was shot and killed outside of a restaurant in Durban, a city in South Africa. Unrelated to his own death in 2023, Forbes was investigated in connection with the death of his fiancée, Anele “Nellie” Tembe, two years earlier.

On April 11, 2021, Tembe fell from the 10th floor of the Pepperclub Hotel in Cape Town. Initially, Forbes investigated this death, which was primarily treated as a suicide or unnatural death. In June 2022, the National Prosecuting Authority declined to prosecute anyone in the case. They returned the case docket to the investigating police for further review. Following this, Tembe’s family has vehemently disputed this suicide ruling. The family has alleged that Forbes pushed Tembe from the balcony, cleaning up blood and evidence in the room afterward. Forbes had publicly denied his involvement in Tembe’s death.

Tembe’s family has successfully pressured the court to open a formal judicial inquest into her death. Hearings have taken place in recent months, with the most recent being held on October 20, 2026.

Cape Town DOCTORS’ Testimony May INDICATE Foul Play

In the hearing on October 20, the doctor who examined rapper AKA right after Tembe’s death revealed information about the rapper’s injuries. The doctor claims to have found fresh scratches and bruises on the rapper. In the hearing reported through Times Live, the doctor stated, “The physical examination was done on the patient after exposing his full body. He had many fresh scratch marks. It was quite a tense examination. He wasn’t answering all my questions as I was putting them to him. We convinced him to undress so we could go through the full-body examination. I could understand that at that particular time, he was a bit stressed and agitated. So, we couldn’t get a proper history of how he got his bruises.”

Just one day before the hearing, Forbes’ father questioned this report, as well as the location of the marks on his son’s body. He questioned why no one is focused on the gaps in the medical report and this doctor’s claims. Forbes’ father attended the hearing on Monday. Times Live reports that he claimed, “There are things happening at this inquest where I feel the right facts are not being put on the table, and what’s being put on the table is not being questioned in terms of how accurate it is.”

The next date of this formal inquest has been postponed until November 17, 2026. These proceedings were adjourned to allow further forensic testimony from forensic, medical, and toxicology experts.

Photo by RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP via Getty Images

The post Doctor Reveals New Details About Late Rapper’s Injuries After Fiancée’s Death appeared first on VICE.

On January 30, 2023, Tampa rapper Ace NH shot and killed his 22-year-old girlfriend, Alana Sims. The 22-year-old was pregnant at the time with a child that was originally believed to be the rapper’s. DNA evidence later indicated that the child wasn’t his. Sims also had an 18-month-old toddler in a nearby car seat during the shooting. The toddler was unharmed in the incident. Ace NH, whose real name is Billy Adams III, had recently been acquitted of an unrelated double-murder case just before the murder. He was arrested on February 8, 2023, for first-degree murder and killing the unborn child.

Prosecutors believe Adams lured Sims to the location because he wanted to continue a relationship with another woman. Initially, he believed the unborn child was his. In September 2026, Adams was found guilty of killing Sims and her unborn child. Following this conviction, an 8 to 4 vote from the jury recommended the death penalty.

Adams Asks The Judge For The Death Penalty

Sometime in October 2026, Adams penned a letter to Judge Mark Wolfe, requesting the death penalty, going against what his defense team has advised. In the letter, as reported by Fox 13 out of Tampa, the rapper stated, “I don’t want my lawyers to present any mitigation or arguments at this hearing, and I am asking this court to sentence me to what the jury voted for.” He also added, “I don’t have a problem with the death penalty.”

He says it’s his own decision despite what his defense has advised. His decision isn’t uncommon in cases like this. The defense urged the jury to consider life without parole for the murder of the unborn child. They did, however, call for life without parole on the count of murder for Sims. For the count of murder of the unborn child, the jury is considering the death penalty.

Billy Adams III, known by his stage name Ace NH, will be sentenced on December 1, 2026. Before his 2023 arrest, Ace NH released four studio albums in a span of three years. His final album, Underground Icon, was released on February 1, 2026, just two days after the murders and only seven days before his arrest.

Photo credit: @acenh7111 via YouTube

The post Rapper Makes Shocking Request to Judge As Family Fights to Save His Life appeared first on VICE.

He might look like something found in the dumpster at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. He might shamelessly plunder the sonics of decades of deep-fried and gravy-smothered hits. But despite everything about his presentation and performance, Kid Rock is not actually southern. 

If he were, he might have done the friendly thing and warned Eminem off of collaborating on “Heal My Faith,” a song on his recent Christian album “Halfway 2 Jesus.” He might have stopped his longtime friend and fellow Michigander from irreparable reputational damage. Instead, he let Slim Shady learn a hard lesson that true southerners know: You lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. 

“Heal My Faith” is genial to the point of being unmemorable, a bit of cringy Christian pablum that encourages loving someone even when you’re outside of the pit. It’s student-athlete core, a mish-mash of choirs, electric guitar noises over pounding drums that all sound like keyboard presets. Kid Rock’s contributions are entirely lifted from inspirational T-shirts, table scraps from rejected Jelly Roll songs. The result is that “Heal My Faith” offers very little to chew on — until Eminem shows up.

The boilerplate praise chug of the song has one upside: It forces the “Rap God” to slow down. Left to his own devices, middle-aged Eminem has been the hip-hop equivalent to masturbatory guitarists, his late-stage work full of technically impressive displays of chops that nonetheless lack the fun and melody of his radio hits. Hearing him enter the song with a flow that’s not indebted to a J.J. Fad outro offered a glimmer of hope. But it was short-lived.

On “Heal My Faith,” the rapper who first gained mainstream attention by lighting the pop chart’s sacred cows afire wonders why we can’t all just get along. It’s shocking stuff from the rapper who famously mused about dropping an “awfully hot coffee pot” on Donald Trump in a freestyle at the BET Hip Hop Awards in 2017. Now, Slim Shady seems to be saying, “We might believe in fundamentally opposed directions for this country. We might differ on the idea of extending dignity to all people, but can’t we put that aside for the sake of a new single you can buy?” 

You don’t need to hear it. You’ve already heard it. It’s the realm of purple state campaign ads and Earthbound Trading Co. bumper stickers. It’s junk, and Eminem seems to know it.

How else can you explain a verse that is 90% throat-clearing and preemptive dodges of the backlash he knows is coming? Eminem spends bar after bar defending his decision to even appear on the song, touting his decades-long friendship with Kid Rock and their intertwined history in the music industry.

He talks about their shared roots in Detroit’s music scene, and how their paths crossed again and again. He details an early CD release party at length, where the more established Kid Rock showed up to lend support to the emerging rapper. It isn’t until the closing lines of his verse that Eminem turns to God and the brotherhood of man.

“Liberal and evangelical can agree,” he raps. “It’s God first, home of the free.”

Reputation-wise, the collaboration does far more for Kid Rock than it does for Eminem. The former has long been fully consumed by Trump World, becoming more of a standby entertainer for MAGA events than a rock star. Eminem, on the other hand, once told fans who supported Trump to stop streaming his music. 

Rock told Billboard that he hadn’t planned to “drag [Eminem] into my political world,” but he had to have known  that was impossible. The nod from a supposed Trump critic removes a small bit of the stain on Kid Rock, but it also transfers directly to his collaborator.

Eminem might have been hoping to build a bridge with this collaboration, but at least according to his Instagram comments, his fans aren’t ready to get over it. One commenter assured him that it’s okay to cut off a friendship “over moral differences.” Another said Eminem’s line in the sand against Trump must have been “brushed back into the beach.” The rapper’s newfound neutrality, one wrote, still amounted to “choosing a side.”

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You can’t feel too bad for Eminem, who’s had plenty of opportunities to see that who you rap with is who you are. After all, more than a year after her breakout single “What I Want,” which she recorded with the controversial country music star Morgan Wallen, the pop singer Tate McRae is still being confronted by fans and interviewers with questions about the pair’s collaboration. 

Wallen, who’s been given about as many second chances as gold records, has never explicitly identified himself as a supporter of the MAGA movement. But his history of using slurs on camera, the general nastiness of his dejected young man music and a massive social media tiff with “Saturday Night Live” have solidified him as an anti-woke warrior in the popular conception. 

“It’s crazy to think that one song could define a whole person,” McRae told W Magazine earlier this month.“There are many aspects of my personality that three-quarters of my audience has no idea about. You hope one day you figure out a way to show all aspects of it.”

There’s little chance that Eminem will face such questions in the future, if only because his career as a hitmaker is basically over. He was something exciting and fresh when he pantsed the pop culture landscape in the late 1990s, but joking about how much everything sucks is a young man’s game. Coming from an older man, it just sounds bitter and out-of-touch. 

Different listeners draw the start of his decline and the end of his relevancy at different points. Most agree that the zeitgeist of rap started to shift away from the stubbornly anachronistic rapper sometime around the end of the aughts. In 2013, he released a well-received album seemingly purpose-built to cap on his career, and then he just kept going. The 23-year-old McRae, on the other hand, will have her past decisions dug up by what remains of the music press after each new chart smash. Eminem may well be staring down a future where his regrettable decision to record contemporary worship dreck with Kid Rock generated his last real headlines. 

It’s something the culturally savvy clown of Eminem’s early career would have been smart enough to avoid. 

The post Eminem’s Kid Rock collab shows the risk of cozying up to MAGA appeared first on Salon.com.