I met “Kurious” Jorge Alvarez nine years ago in the audience of an open-mic night at an Upper West Side dive bar. He humbly remarked that I might know who he was. I certainly did. I bought MF DOOM’s now-25-year-old classic Operation: Doomsday in the early aughts and dug further into the discography over the years; to engage with DOOM’s catalogue is to enjoy a string of hall-of-fame Kurious verses. He’s a laid-back, spiritual presence in Doomsday’s “?”; a stoned antiwar voice in “Smokin’ That Shit,” off Black Bastards from the pre-Villainy group KMD; and an impossibly smooth co-star for the booming “Fastlane,” from the King Geedorah Take Me to Your Leader album. Their histories shared common points: Elektra Records shelved the KMD album over fears about its abrasive title and art in 1994, the same year Kurious’s positively reviewed but criminally slept-on debut album A Constipated Monkey landed. The Puerto Rican and Cuban Manhattanite arrived too early to the party; later in the decade, interest in Fat Joe, Big Pun, and Beatnuts records rose concurrent to a Latin-pop boom correctively acknowledging the contributions of communities that were always in the picture.
The mid-2010s seemed a more exciting time for Kurious than the mid-’90s, when he longed to escape a Columbia Records contract he found oppressive and was reconnecting with DOOM. But the optimism shifted in the 2020s after the death of his mother as well as his former collaborator. Running into Kurious over the last few years, you would never stop hearing swatches of incredible music in the works. The release of this month’s Majician — a Kurious album executive-produced by MF DOOM and released on the late legend’s Metalface Records — documents the revitalization of an indie-rap vet’s craft and confidence. Full of thoughtful, playful lyricism served over quixotic sample loops by New York beat-maker Mono En Stereo, Majician is a worthy addition to the Metalface galaxy and a great excuse to run questions by Kurious that I’ve held off on since pitching him on an interview when we first met. We spoke about classic and yet-to-be released DOOM collabs, finding career footing without major-label help, and weathering the aching weeks in late 2020 where he couldn’t reveal the news that he’d lost his friend. Honestly, he’s the same person you hear in the verses: earnest, funny, grounded, inspiring.
It’s good to see Metalface Records attached to the new album. Does it feel like a homecoming?
I’m marinating on how it feels. Not like a homecoming, but like what’s been established being manifested. It’s always been home to me. Now it’s home outwardly.
You got your first Pitchfork write-up for “Untainted.”
I’m so out of the loop, bro, that I had to ask … “Yo … Pitchfork?” Pitchfork is official, man. I don’t know any of this stuff, so I was just grateful.
The album’s been a real slow burn. Talk about the process.
There’s one song on there, “Barry Gibb,” that was done in 2013. That was right when I started working with Mono. By 2016, I had relinked with DOOM, and Mono started sending me so much music. I was like, “Okay, I’m comfortable with the sound.” He’s like, “Let’s start something from scratch.” I had “Unknown Species,” the first single off this project, in 2016 or 2017. On my second trip out to Grenada to see DOOM, I played it and he loved it. He wanted to license it. He was like, “Yo, Jorge, let me get that. I’ll use it for something.” I got a lot of stuff that we did that’s in his files. Hopefully it’ll see the light of day. He brought up the idea of putting the album out on Metalface. That’s my bro. He’s the GOAT. Through him, I could see a path to a reinvention. I thought, I might get another run at this to really be able to pay some bills and feed my kids. It was just exciting. It felt like I was 19 on Columbia Records again.
The record’s been done since 2019. The bulk of it, I would say, was done from 2017 to 2019. When DOOM transitioned, I was just like, I guess this project’s never going to see the light of day. But shortly thereafter, Jasmine, his wife, hollered at me and said DOOM wanted everything to move forward according to plan. But because she’s new to putting out records, it took a while. From 2019 to now, she was getting the hang of the label thing and dealing with all the stuff with his estate. My project is like the tiniest crumb in that world, but we finally got there to it, so I’m happy.
What ever happened with Madvillainy 2?
Only Vill knows that. What I do know is that there was a body of work for it, and DOOM was intending on completing it, and he might have. And I think I’m on there somewhere.
In “Eye of Horus,” you mention Hurricane G. We lost her and Prince Markie Dee over the past few years. I see you as kind of a link between that generation of rappers and the current one.
It’s great that I’ve gotten to become that, because people used to have me in the golden-era box. I worked hard to get out of that box. My work with Vill helps. I don’t have the luxury to live off “Walk Like a Duck.” People like it, but that’s not going to cut it. A lot of the collabs I do are with dudes like 15 years younger. I get more embraced by the younger people. The young guys give me inspiration, and I feel like I got more in common with them a lot of times.
Majician features the anonymous rap legend Mr. Fantastik on “Par for the Course,” and I wonder whether he cares that there is great speculation about his true identity.
He don’t give a shit. He’s a G. Coolest dude you want to know, man. Real scientific. “Make things happen” type of person.
There’s a line on the new album that says Constipated Mob’s Kadi “brought Jay-Z to Loud.” Please tell that story.
When Kadi was working at Loud Records, he went on a tour and they were laughing, because he had bought a ferret on the road with the artists. He’s a funny dude, but nobody ever mentions how he brought Jay-Z to Loud Records, and they turned him down. They don’t point out the great executive shit that he did. I’m letting them know. People will always crack jokes. When we see people in public: “Oh, the ferret. Oh, the ferret.” He’s a fucking brilliant mind too.
From 1993 to 1994, you appeared on Del the Funkee Homosapien’s No Need for Alarm and KMD’s Black Bastards. But I recently realized you were also on the Gravediggaz 6 Feet Deep album?
Yeah, Prince Paul hollered at me. He was at Firehouse Studios. I came through and met Method Man. I didn’t see RZA, but Prince Paul was there. They had a song called “Know Where to Run.” He said, “Do a little something at the end of this shit. Say something.” I started with the “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.” I sang that through the outro. Shout to Prince Paul.
After your first album, you were in a situation not unlike KMD’s, where your record deal didn’t shake out the way you intended. Did you bond with DOOM over that?
KMD was under Serch and Pete’s production company right before they filmed the “Gas Face” video. I met DOOM in the Def Jam offices. We were hanging out that same night. We were cool instantly. It was immediate, and it never stopped. Then we both went through the process. DOOM had a second album that was supposed to be coming, but Subroc passed, and the Black Bastards album was so controversial that it caused problems at Elektra. Eventually, they got out of that contract. I had momentum for a second album, but then I took one too many ’shrooms or something. I found God, and my whole reality switched. I was still writing, but I had to take a break. It was like I was a baby walking again. Like, “Wait a minute. I can’t just rhyme the same way I rhyme.” The whole world looked different all of a sudden. I experienced stuff that was not normal that sticks with me. I had to get acclimated to that new reality. It taught me to keep doing what I was doing anyway with more awareness. I never quit rapping. That’s where DOOM was able to get a verse from me. He came with “?.” “Jorge, I need you on this.” He knew it would be good. I opened my book, and he kinda pushed me to work. I read my rhyme, and he was like, “That shit is dope. Are you crazy?”
When the news hit that DOOM passed, it slowly dawned on me that you had to have known for a while. What was it like having to keep that under wraps?
That shit sucked, bro. I didn’t even tell my mom. And my mom loved DOOM. She was mad cool with DOOM. I didn’t tell anybody. I told his wife I wasn’t going to say anything. I was just drinking a lot. It was bad. It continued when my mom passed. That whole shit got dark: the pandemic, Vill passing, and then my mother passing. I was probably lit every day. It wasn’t good.
How does it feel to be putting this record out without him?
It’s a blessing, but it sucks. I was thinking about it in my car the other day. Just like, how much more fun it is when he was here. How much more fun it was when we relinked. I’d be a hype man or whatever. Not to take away from his man Big Benn, because that’s my bro. He’d have two hype men.
You sell yourself a little short sometimes. You would have plenty to perform. I want to ask about my favorite DOOM feature of yours. What do you remember about King Geedorah’s “Fastlane”?
That was during that time where I was still trying to get my confidence up, but I had rhymes. We went to Long Island, me and DOOM, and he was like, “Let’s lay some shit down.” He put that beat on. I started writing and then reading him my verse, and he’d say, “All right, stop right there. What else you got on the page?” I rhymed the first four or eight bars of the next verse, and he said, “That’s the chorus.” He’s looking at me like I’m stupid because he didn’t know exactly what I went through. He got mad at me, like, “You the illest, what the fuck?” I was overthinking it. He coached me through it. DOOM kinda had to walk me through my own notebook. In retrospect, those are some of my best moments.