MF Grimm

Born in Manhattan as Percival Carey, MF Grimm watched a promising hip-hop trajectory slip away after a near-fatal shooting during the early 1990s left him confined to a wheelchair. The same artist who later supplied MF Doom with his signature prefix went on to shape New York’s independent rap circuit by launching Day by Day Entertainment as both founder and CEO of the label and its global distribution arm. Long before street life claimed his attention, the future Grimm Reaper had been an enthusiastic skateboarder and a childhood performer on Sesame Street. At fourteen he began treating rap as a serious pursuit, forming the Gravediggaz—not the RZA and Prince Paul collective—with X-Ecutioners member Roc Raida. Stages and sessions soon placed him alongside Kool G Rap, KRS-One, and 2Pac. Although he had been slated to appear on Main Source’s landmark “Live at the BBQ,” incarceration kept him from the session; the verse instead surfaced on his own 1993 debut single, “So Whatcha Want Nigga?” Major labels including Atlantic and Interscope began extending contracts, yet the next year multiple gunshots ended those prospects, stripping his sight and hearing and paralyzing him from the neck down. While partial recovery restored his vision and hearing, he remained wheelchair-bound. During hospitalization he composed numerous tracks that later surfaced on the 2005 release Scars & Memories.

As the late-’90s independent hip-hop wave gathered force, Grimm resurfaced on Fondle ’Em Records with a series of 12-inch singles shared with Company Flow, the Juggaknots, and MF Doom. Drawing from the Wu-Tang Clan’s unified thematic approach and the monster roster of the Godzilla films, he assembled the Monster Island Czars, assigning aliases such as Megalon and Gigan while he and MF Doom performed as Superstar Jet Jaguar and King Geedorah. After Fondle ’Em ceased operations, Grimm established an outlet for his own work and that of others through Day by Day Entertainment. In 2000, facing $100,000 bail on drug charges, he completed his debut album The Downfall of Ibliys: A Ghetto Opera in a single twenty-four-hour session. Convicted under New York’s Rockefeller laws and sentenced to four years to life, he ultimately served three years. Upon release he issued Digital Tears: Email from Purgatory in 2004 under the M.I.C. moniker. By then relations with Doom had soured; Grimm began using the GM Grimm name, though he retained the MF Grimm alias as well. His grievances found voice on “The Book of Daniel,” included on the 2006 triple-disc set American Hunger, the first such project in hip-hop history. That summer Vertigo, DC Comics’ adult imprint, announced a 2007 graphic novel drawn from his life, titled Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm.