Last year, MF Doom – under the guise of Viktor Vaughn – dropped one of the strongest underground releases of the year, in the form of Vaudeville Villain. This was a concept album that presented Doom’s new alias rhyming over the beats of many of Sound Ink’s in house producers, as well as as few outsiders, such as RJD2. This year, to everyone’s surprise, Doom returns as Vaughn, this time executing the same concept, but instead using the Insomniac crew’s production team. 

      On paper, at first Viktor Vaughn 2 sounded like a great idea, however once details started leaking about the album, heads began to fear what the outcome would sound like. It was first found out that it was only an EP, which of course wasn’t positive since it’s predecessor was a full-length. Secondly, this was not an official follow-up to the Sound Ink release, because it was now on Insomniac Records, and featured none of the same producers. Of course finally, for an EP, there were an awful lot of guest emcees attached to the release. How good could this album be without Doom overseeing its construction? Would this be a worthy sequel, or would it sound like a posthumous 2Pac release?

       With a team up virtually unknown producers at the helm, such as System D-128, DiViNCi, Swamburger, Session 31, DJ I.N.C., and Dub-L, one might think that it would be impossible to recreate the magic found on it’s predecessor. However executive producer Iz-Real and DiViNCi sew this album together with little or no input from Doom and it actually works surprisingly well. The creatively cut-and-pasted intro, “Viktomizer” is a mosaic of cleverly dug movie & cartoon samples, which suggests that Doom and Vaughn are two separate entities, as one voice says “Viktor, I thought I recognized you, I thought you were somebody I know, the same features, the same build…..”.

      “Back End” officially jumps the album off as spaced-out beat kicks in at 115 beats-per-minute, with Vaughn spitting fast raps at breakneck speed, slowly blending into a more down-to-earth funky bass-guitar loop that evolves into a lovely chopped up mess of drums, cuts, and stabs. “Fall Back/Titty Fat” also impresses, mirroring last album’s “Change The Beat”, yet staying at a solid 90 BPM’s, changing up samples every 20 seconds, animating Doom’s fluid styles, with each beat doper than the next. “Doom On Vik” follows, an improvisational interlude, where a more-than-one-beer-sipping Doom rambles on about the difference between Doom and Vaughn. 

       “R.A.P. Game” marks the album’s first collaborative song, where Doom teams up with Mars Ill’s Manchild, and a less than impressive Iz-Real, yet the trio holds it down over broken RZA-esque pianos, that could been found somewhere in the 36 Chambers. “Dope Skill” is another definite head-nodder power-packed with punchy horns and a guest shot from Carl Kavorkian, which is quickly followed-up with “Doper Skiller”, arguably the album’s best track, marking the first dream collaboration between Doom and Kool Keith. As the album begins to come to a close, “Bloody Chain” teams Doom up with Poison Pen, over a spooky, mystical track tailor-made for Doom’s similar style.  

       In essence, the preemptive complaints made about this album could be looked at as negatives, however once you hear the album it’s entirely different story. Yes, this is an EP, however this leaves much less room for error, resulting in a tighter knit package. And yes it’s instead sewn together by Insomniac’s team, however despite the fact there is no RJD2 on this one, they do just as fine a job as the Sound Ink team at producing for Doom. And yes, there are a few too many guests, however they don’t overpower Doom, and while most probably feared that this would end up sounding like a compilation rather than a Doom record, it doesn’t. For that matter, it holds together much better than King Geedorah’s Take Me To Your Leader did. 

        Sure, this album is a thinly veiled commercial for Insomniac’s artists, as well as their magazine, however it’s hard to front on. Doom’s incredible flow carries it through, and his intentions for recording the album shine through with the first lyric of the LP: “Dub it off your man, don’t spend that ten bucks, I did it for the advance, the back end sucks”. While this might be true, fans of Doom that do spend that dough shouldn’t be disappointed.