What has changed for Doom in the last four years? Listening to Born Like This, not very much.

And this is a very good thing.

He worked his way up to such an absurdly prolific level of quality control and innovation by the middle of the decade, it seems fine that it took him four years to assemble a release maintaining it.  There is very little here that is relatively new for the villain.  Despite a slight name shift, he is still mask faced and possibly metal fingered and still rapping like a motherfucker, so the missing “MF” is still implied.

The production here is not up to the career highlights for both Doom and his collaborators on the Madvillain album with Madlib at Stone’s Throw or with the SoundInk house team as Viktor Vaughn.  Now working with Lex, the stellar label that released last year’s best new album with Neon Neon, the tracks here favorably recall his work on the King Geedorah album and his Mm Food solo release.

Doom handled most of the beats himself in the energetic cut and paste loop style that provides a colorful counterpoint to his sneering deadpan delivery.  A handful were farmed out to Jake One, a Rhymesayers affiliate who dropped a solo showcase last year and did much of the music for the Gift of Gab’s overlooked solo disc 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up.  He does not offer an independent sonic perspective for Doom to interact with so much as he apes the Doom style seamlessly.  Could have been more exciting, but it doesn’t distract from the lyrical brilliance on constant display.

Two highlights come from the most active posthumous musician this side of Tupac, producer J Dilla.  “Lightworks” has been heard several times since Donuts, but it’s unlikely anybody will begrudge another two minutes of this fine beat with a fresh Doom verse atop.  “Gazillion Ear,” Dilla’s other contribution from beyond the grave, is the first proper song and locks the album into Doom’s warped worldview.

There is little conceptual novelty on the album, more a sporadic re-iteration of pet themes like the emcee’s wounded supervillainy and the world coming to a chaotic end, etc.  There’s plenty of room for a childish song about Batman’s homosexual adventures and a throwaway answering machine interlude, for example.  Guest voices are rare but immensely sympathetic, from the character rapping of Ghostface and Raekwon to the dark ranting of Charles Bukowski, sampled at length on mid-album collage “Cellz.”

To Doom’s credit, he handles the highlight, “That’s That,” all on his own.  Recalling Madvillain’s “Accordian,” the song is based around an insistent loop that worms it’s way into the brain (here cribbed from Galt MacDermot, the Hair composer who, like David Axelrod, has emerged as an unlikely popular sample source).  Also like “Accordian,” it is an all-verse, calm-voiced lyrical torrent (“Give an emcee a rectal hysterectomy/Electronic removal of the bowels foul technically/Don’t expect to see the recipe/’Till we receive the check as well as the collection fee”).

Same old Doom, still a legend, still one of the most unusual emcee savaants on the scene.  With his nearly mumbled monotone, he produces a stream of couplets delivering compact short stories, dense metaphors, and sick jokes often simultaneously.  It would be nice to hear more from him, but these are the kind of verbal tapestries it takes a good five years to untangle anyway.