MF Doom

It's happenstance, of course, that Pixar released its latest delight, The Incredibles, at roughly the same time that international supervillain MF Doom dropped his third (his third!) album of 2004, MM..Food. Or maybe, just maybe, like the earliest Modernist painters, the CGI masters and the luminary of underground hip-hop found themselves drawn by a mysterious, subconscious force to the same brilliant idea: The Incredibles reinvents the comic-book film by forcing its family of superheroes to confront the doldrums of suburbia; MM..Food reinvigorates the tired clichés of hip-hop through the lens of food.

Ritz Bits. Triscuits. Little Debbie Snack Cakes. Couscous. Beef patties con queso. Mystery meat and hot plates. It's a smorgasbord. And like The Incredibles, MM..Food is so funny that you won't notice any reinventing or reinvigorating until later. There are 3-D raisins "stationary like B.B. King," "average MCs like crabs in a barrel/Pass the Old Bay" and a guy who "looks like a black Wookie when he let his beard grow."

Doom's flow is as relentlessly clever as usual, and his production -- he produced most of the album himself -- is stellar. The looping melody of "Kookies" apes the familiar Sesame Street theme while in the background he drops samples of Cookie Monster gorging, and on four cuts in the middle of the album, he doesn't rap at all but instead layers food-related samples (including what sounds like a BBC report on edible food wrappers) over infectious beats.

Mm..Food might not be as strong as Madvillainy, Doom's stunning collaboration with Madlib from earlier this year, but, like a sausage-and-eggs platter on a late, hungover morning, you'll soak up every last bit.