DOOMsday At Congress Theater

By Veronica Murtagh in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 15, 2010 9:30PM

Several thousand eager hip-hop fans gathered at Congress Theater Saturday night for the sold out, rescheduled January 29 DOOM/Mos Def show. Attendees waited in multiple hour-long will call lines to claim their tickets into what can only be described as organizational and crowd chaos. Fans bided their time for over 5 hours post-doors before the main acts took stage, irritated and putting the opening performers through the ringer with boos and airborne objects.

But it was Mos Def and DOOM themselves that took the crowd from edgy to angry. Mos Def performed dressed as DOOM, covering DOOM's tracks, an interesting choice that divided the crowd. Things went from bad to worse when DOOM lived up to years of shady shenanigans via an extremely short performance that many, including local hip-hop blogger Andrew Barber of Fake Shore Drive, speculate was lip-synced by a masked performer who was not Daniel 'DOOM' Dumile. Barber followed up his show review by challenging readers to examine a live video from Saturday and cast their own verdict.

We think the video speaks for itself. Over the past few years, Dumile has seemingly spiraled further into his self-created comic book universe. Performing under a persona of mystery and fantasy is one thing, but duping your fanbase and promoters out of time and money crosses the line of enigmatic into unacceptable.