MF Doom

It's happenstance, of course, that Pixar released The Incredibles at roughly the same time international supervillain MF Doom dropped his third (his third!) album of 2004, MM..Food. Or maybe, just maybe, the CGI masters and the luminary of underground hip-hop found themselves drawn by a mysterious 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 you won't notice how revelatory it is until later.

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 hungover morning, it's good--and you'll soak up every last bit.