“From the top of the key for three, villain.”

In that husky, low timbre, MF DOOM starts off his first of two guest verses on “Rock Co.Kane Flow,” the album closer for De La Soul’s seventh album, The Grind Date. It’s an anticipated moment, even now, 20 years since the album was released.

Jake One’s sparse, no-frills beat — just stomping and thudding drums and piano plinks — is fitting terrain for the Villain, as DOOM fills up the space with his coolly disjointed delivery. It’s essentially a DOOM track, with the MC commandeering “Rock Co. Kane Flow” to wax poetic about his pay rate for writing rhymes, mediocre MCs (and their equally mediocre jewelry) and sticking people up for their sneakers (or Atari cartridges).

That DOOM aided De La in the final minutes of The Grind Date is significant when you think about how momentous his 2004 output was. Earlier that year, Madvillainy, his classic album alongside legendary producer Madlib, was finally released after the duo first began working on it in 2002.

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