lost paws:

MF Doom Interview: unedited transcript by Hua Hsu in The Wire Archive

"M.F. Doom character is really a combination of all villains throughout time. The classic villain with the mask - Phantom of the Opera-style, of course there's a little twist of Dr. Doom in there, even a little Destro from GI Joe. It's an icon of American culture. I kinda made it a mish-mash of all the villains together, and my last name is Dumile, so everyone used to call me Doom anyway. It's a parody of all the villains. The villain always returns, the mask, that kind of thing. Through the way these comics are written, it always shows you the duality of things, how the bad guy ain't really a bad guy if you look at it from his perspective.... "

"I look at it like this. I'm an author, it just so happens what I write is in rhythmic form, and it's over music. So for me to get different points across, just like an author would in a novel, I come with different characters. Now that author is writing from each character's point of view, but he's not the particular character. In hip-hop it's the same thing. We get kinda confused, I think we limit ourselves with the whole "I'm the guy" kind of thing. Like I-this, You-that. In hip-hop you're the guy. It's too much responsibility - you don't want to be that guy. The Villain is a guy that transcends me personally - he can do shit that I can't do. So I'm like, if hip-hop is all about bragging and boasting, then I'm going to make the illest character - he can brag about all kinds of shit. Like why not? It's all your imagination? Go as far as you want. So in that, I'm like okay, if that's the case, then I can make multiple characters, and they can even have conflicting views, so you get around the whole thing of people trying to categorize you, a typecast-kinda thing, where if you change your mind. We're growing up as all this is going on - we're going to change our minds. The public looks at that and is like, Oh he's contradicting himself. When you got multiple characters you never contradict yourself. Have another character come with another point of view."