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Many of these tracks will be familiar to DOOM fans, who tend to be of the obsessive/completist variety, but it’s still fun to hear DOOM’s extracurricular activities collected in one volume.
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I err on the side of good rap, something Unexpected Guest is full of.
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As for those of you with every Dumile album in your library from KMD through DOOM, you wouldn’t be missing much if you pass this one up. Should you absolutely need one or two cuts on here, though, just hit up Amazon or iTunes to satiate that craving.
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Guests reinforces its inessential nature by presenting, for the most part, a one-dimensional rendering of DOOM as a lyricist.
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Unexpected Guests, his collection of B-sides and easy-to-miss cameos, is unsatisfying because it doesn’t offer the space that Doom needs to build his narratives.
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Some of these beats are really interesting and unique, almost flawlessly incorporating subtle elements of jazz, folk, psychedelia, and the boogie-woogie rhythm of J Dilla, whose two appearances on the album are characteristically powerful. Too often, though, DOOM and his guests offer inconsistent, barely-there performances.
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The rest of the 15 tracks are of two types: sub-par production work DOOM did for other people (like Masta Killa) or two-minute tracks where DOOM drops a vintage sample, says a few winking pop-culture references and then moves on without consideration.