Black Bastards

KMD, the Long Island group of Zev Love X and his younger brother Subroc, recorded Black Bastards between 1991 and 1993 at Chung King studios. Their cover is a rough pen drawing of a Sambo character, the racist minstrel caricature, hanging from a gallows. The group had already used the figure inside a "no" symbol as their logo, and here they went further and executed him.

For KMD it was an attack on the stereotype itself, a drawing that killed off the image white America had made of Black people. Elektra saw only a lynching. After Billboard columnist Terri Rossi criticised the artwork in 1994, the label shelved the album, which had been scheduled for that May, and dropped the group. Subroc had already been killed by a car while crossing a highway in 1993, before the record was finished.

The loss sent Zev Love X into years of silence, and he later returned behind a metal mask as MF DOOM. Black Bastards finally came out on 15 May 2000 through Readyrock, with reissues by Sub Verse in 2001 and DOOM's own Metalface label in 2008. The cover drawing is credited to The EMEF, with visuals by Scotch 79th.