A Rough Guide to Doseone

Doseone & Boom Bip – Circle (Leaf, 2000)
Possibly the weirdest hip-hop album ever recorded, Dose bounces off angular production to explore every possible facet of his voice; the result is a critical textbook for anyone with delusions of performance poetry.

Themselves – THEM (Anticon, 2000)
Despite the seemingly simple beats and raps configuration, there is no shortage of jaw-dropping pyrotechnics and originality on show here. An indispensible banger, even for those who normally shy from Dose’s more experimental output.

Themselves – The No Music (Anticon, 2002)
With this album, Dose and Jel not only re-invented themselves as a most forward thinking hip-hop team, but reinvented the entire genre. Dadaist rap swagger anthems and avant-glitch sculptures keep it more real than a million gold studded crunk pretenders.

cLOUDEAD – Ten (Mush, 2004)
Dose and WHY? trade expansive raps and platitudes over Odd Nosdam’s dream-like sound collage in a sublime powerhouse of free-ambient soundscape-hop. This collection of 12"s defined the advancement of hip-hop for the arthouse generation.

Subtle – For Hero : For Fool (Lex, 2006)
A six-piece expansion of Themselves’ outerlimit hip-hop, Subtle shed a lot of the psychedelic freak-out of their initial recordings and picked up a fuzzy pop sensibility along the way. The sheer beauty of the songs belie dense arrangements that would make Brian Wilson dizzy.