Hip-Hoppers Stunting?

So, I may be two days late and a Buckshot short....but word is that MF Doom has been sending some alternate versions of himself to perform in his place.

Slava Kuperstein of hiphopdx.com reports that MF Doom did not in fact perform at Beat Club in Los Angeles, but was rather represented by someone else in a Doom mask. The facts they provide make some sense, and the CunninLynguists have already called the artist out on the practice, so the rumor may in fact be true. Is MF Doom the Banksy of hip-hop? Masking himself so you cannot determine his precise whereabouts or know if it is really him?

I'm undecided if I think MF Doom's stunts are extremely cool - thereby raising the cultural cache of actually getting to see Doom himself - or if they are attempts to take advantage of an audience that is eager to see him and capitalize on the value of his name without doing much work for it. The story that I found on MySpace is reposted below...

MF DOOM Allegedly Puts On Another Fake Show

Los Angeles' Beat Club is the latest in a line of venues that claim MF DOOM sent an imposter to perform in his stead.

by Slava Kuperstein

Www.Hiphopdx.Com

“It’s hard to see here but you can catch glimpses of him." Explained a concert viewer who posted a video of the perfomance (shown below). "It was obvious that he was an imposter since he never once laid his hand on a microphone and just played his new tracks on a laptop.”

When asked for comment by consequenceofsound.net, the rapper's label, Stones Throw - which does not handle his booking - said it was “obvious that he wasn’t going to show up at a venue that fits only 200 people when his performance fee requires venues about 10 times that size.” It should be noted that the label did not explicitly confirm nor deny that the perfomance was an imposter's.

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In the past, DOOM has explained that the allegations were the result of his being unrecognizable due to massive weight loss. He was also called out for the alleged practice byThe Cunninlynguists' DJ Kno in an open letter.