Since his passing late last year, MF DOOM’s legacy has been about his lyrical contributions to the hip-hop canon through his whimsical, one-of-a-kind rhymes, but recent events have made those rhymes the center of an ugly power struggle between some of those who were closest to him in his life. More specifically, his rhyme book is the focal point of a dispute between DOOM’s widow, Jasmine Dumile, and his former business partner Eothen “Egon” Alapatt, the founder and president of Now-Again Records. Egon was general manager of Stones Throw Records, which put out DOOM and Madlib’s collaborative album Madvillainy under the duo name Madvillain.
Now, though, Jasmine Dumile tells TMZ that Egon is holding onto DOOM’s rhyme book and refuses to relinquish it, even after numerous attempts to get it back. In a statement, she says, We had hoped after DOOM transitioned Egon would do the right thing and return the books to the family but he has continued to ignore these requests. Unfortunately, Egon is not the only former associate abusing the likeness, art, and life’s work of DOOM.”
While she didn’t want to elaborate on which other former associates might be taking advantage of their proximity to DOOM, she did say she will reveal more when it’s “appropriate.”
Meanwhile, in more upbeat DOOM news, he’s received some positive attention lately thanks to a posthumous collaboration with Black Thought and Danger Mouse (the latter of whom he released The Mouse And The Mask with as Danger Doom in 2005), while the rappers he’s inspired paid cute homage to his memory on Instagram. A biography about him is due in 2024, and his name lives on as a cheeky pun in Richmond, Virginia, where a street sweeper was dubbed MF BROOM.