Before Percy Carey was MF Grimm, he was a kid on Sesame Street.
His neighbor on the Upper West Side was Morgan Freeman. Freeman thought the boy — three years old, big Afro, potbelly — would look great on the stoop. So he made a call. Percy Carey appeared on Sesame Street from age five to around age nine. He was the first child to ride Snuffleupagus. One episode, he lost a tooth and went looking for it with Big Bird. Another episode started because he told Jim Henson about a dream he’d had the night before.
Sit with that for a second. Jim Henson. Big Bird. Snuffleupagus. Morgan Freeman next door.
Then he grew up, found hip hop, became one of the most feared battle MCs in New York City — a career that put him on stage next to Kool G Rap, KRS-One, and 2Pac, and nearly landed him on Main Source’s “Live at the BBQ” before a brief jail stint cost him the verse. By 1993 he had a debut album ready and major labels circling. Atlantic. Interscope. The deals were real.
Then during the Blizzard of 1994, on the way to sign one of those deals, Percy Carey and his brother Jay were sprayed with gunfire. The shooting killed Jay and left Percy paralyzed from the chest down — deafened, blinded, and comatose before he fought his way back to hearing and sight. The wheelchair stayed.
The labels disappeared overnight.
What happened next is the part nobody tells. From a wheelchair, with no label, no deal, and no industry support, Percy Carey built Day By Day Entertainment. He financed and executive produced MF DOOM’s debut album Operation: Doomsday — recorded in Grimm’s own basement. He co-founded Monsta Island Czars with DOOM. He gave DOOM the MF prefix. The entire foundation of what became one of underground hip hop’s most celebrated careers was built on Percy Carey’s resources, his space, and his belief.
Then he went to prison. Sentenced to life under the Rockefeller Drug Laws in 2000. He paid a hundred thousand dollars for a single day of bail, walked out, recorded his debut album The Downfall of Ibliys: A Ghetto Opera in twenty-four hours, and went back in. The album was released while he was incarcerated. He didn’t hear it until he got out.
He filed appeals for three years and got his sentence reduced. Released in 2003, he came home to find MF DOOM had become a legend while he was gone.
MF DOOM gets a thousand think pieces every time someone wears the mask as a Halloween costume. When DOOM died in 2020 the internet collapsed. Documentaries, tribute albums, Instagram posts from people who discovered him six months prior. The full posthumous mythology machine, cranked to maximum.
Meanwhile Percy Carey — the man who gave DOOM his name, who recorded Doomsday in his basement, who co-founded Monsta Island Czars with him, who watched from prison as his friend became a legend — sits largely in silence. The beef between them is a footnote. The fact that Grimm was the infrastructure behind DOOM’s entire early career is barely discussed.
The Downfall of Ibliys: A Ghetto Opera is one of the most remarkable albums in underground hip hop. Recorded in twenty-four hours. Released while its creator was awaiting a prison sentence that initially came in as life. The entire album exists because of will that most people will never understand from a position they will never occupy. It sounds like it. Every bar carries weight that can’t be faked.
American Hunger in 2006 — a sixty-track triple album, the first of its kind in hip hop — contains “The Book of Daniel,” a diss track aimed directly at DOOM so precise and cold it should have ended careers. It didn’t. Because nobody was paying attention. Because Grimm has spent his entire career doing extraordinary things in rooms where the lights were off.
Here is what MF Grimm’s story actually is: a kid who rode Snuffleupagus and lost his tooth with Big Bird, became one of New York’s most dangerous MCs, survived being shot on a blizzard night that killed his brother, built an empire from a wheelchair, made classic music in prison, and never once got the recognition the legacy deserves.
DOOM got famous. Grimm got forgotten.
MF Mag exists for exactly this reason.
ALL CAPS. ALWAYS.
— Sato