While DOOM’s flow on studio albums is sometimes lauded for its laid-back quality, there is an intensity to his delivery here. It’s the difference between a supervillain calmly telling you his plan and then actually executing it.

On his sixth album — though only his second under the MF Doom moniker — the metal faced villain MF Doom dialed in his abilities as a rapper and a producer for a fascinatingly idiosyncratic meditation on food that’s as charming as it is dense.

Of the many names that Daniel Dumile made music under, Viktor Vaughn was his least developed, and VV:2 was almost certainly — ahem — doomed to be regarded as one of his most inessential albums.

As we near the album’s 20th anniversary, all superlatives have long since been exhausted on this record, yet no amount of repeated play or extensive analysis can blunt the sheer technical achievement that these two men pulled off.

For anyone else, this would have been a defining record. For MF DOOM, it was a warm-up.

Returning after four years spent out of the spotlight, MF Doom returned for the first time as King Geedorah for a puzzling, brilliant, kaiju-sized rap record full of monsters, villains and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. And, of course, Godzilla.

An instrumental hip-hop album that reflects its creator’s idiosyncrasies and demands to be engaged with is a rare thing in this DOOM-free universe.

Operation: Doomsday sounds warmer and far more eclectic than you would expect a late-'90s underground rap album to, especially given the circumstances that drove MF DOOM to villainy.

That it will always be known for personal and professional setbacks more than its content is a shame.

Every supervillain needs an origin story, and KMD was the genesis point of everything that would come from MF Doom’s career.