“If that level of recognition mattered to me, I’d lose the mask, right?” Dangerdoom (2015)

On an overcast Monday morning in Notting Hill Brian Burton is pushing his eggs around the plate as he chooses his words. The last thing he wants is to re-ignite a controversy that, as far as he’s concerned, is history. “It’s over,” he hazards gingerly, “I mean, I think it’s over.”

And he might be right. Three days after our meeting, a chance encounter with the DJ-cum-producer finds him in the offices of EMI on his way to offer a progress report on his next project — a co-production on Damon Albarn’s imminent solo album. Had he bowled into the same reception a year ago, he would have been kicked out.

As Danger Mouse, Burton built one of last year’s greatest albums and (briefly) put it on his website. The Grey Album was a head-spinningly inventive remix that used a cappella cuts from Jay-Z’s Black Album and elements of the Beatles’ White Album. He hoped that EMI would love his work so much that it might turn a blind eye to his use of copyrighted material. Instead they flooded him with cease-and-desist orders — a heavyweight response which prompted Grey Tuesday, a day of protest in which thousands of sites uploaded the album in defiance of copyright laws.

As EMI fumed, Albarn — looking for someone to produce the next album by Gorillaz — sought Burton out. Hence the charmed position in which Burton finds himself at the end of 2005: guerrilla turned Gorilla, thanks to his production of the cartoon combo’s Demon Days album. Somewhere along the way he also hooked up with the rapper MF Doom to form Dangerdoom, whose new album The Mouse and the Mask might just be the most bizarre, brilliant hip-hop album to appear in 2005.

While at university in Athens, Georgia, Burton formed a band, Pelican City, whose beat-driven pop noir suggests that the West Country triumvirate of Portishead, Massive Attack and Tricky loomed large in his psyche. Indeed, it was Burton’s love of British music that prompted him, at the age of 23, to relocate to London with the idea that he might record Pelican City’s third album over here — a period which he now describes as “the most depressing of my life ”.

Bar work just about paid for the rent of his New Cross bedsit. But in the end, necessity forced him to speed up his beats into something that resembled hip-hop in the hope that he might attract the attention of British record companies. What resulted was a breakthrough of sorts — two well-received albums precipitated a move to Los Angeles, where Danger Mouse became known in hip-hop circles. It was a development which surprised no one more than Burton himself.

“I grew up with hip-hop,” says the son of a teacher and a social worker, “but I never imagined myself making it.” One suspects that this had more to do with the state of the US rap mainstream than it did with the DJ’s own musical ambitions. So when Burton and Albarn assembled the cast of guest stars for Demon Days, they erred towards rap innovators such as De La Soul, Roots Manuva and, for the downbeat November Has Come, one Daniel Dumile.

In the late 1980s, as part of KMD, Dumile enjoyed some success alongside his fellow New Yorkers De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers, but when his brother was killed in a car accident he disappeared off the hip-hop radar and on to the streets, where he was “damn near homeless . . . sleeping on benches and shit”. Relocating to Atlanta to raise his young son, he recorded bits and pieces on borrowed equipment, resurfacing, complete with metal mask, as MF Doom — a persona inspired by the Marvel Comics villain Dr Doom.

“In many ways, it’s surprising that Doom and I didn’t work together before,” says Burton. “There’s a lot of common ground. We’ve both spent time in London, Atlanta and New York. Then you’ve got the whole cartoon thing . . .”

Ah, yes, the cartoons. Years before he adopted the name of ITV’s animated mouse, Burton’s early albums had earned him the attention of the Cartoon Network’s night-time channel Adult Swim — the stoner-friendly gathering post for screwball creations such as Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021.

“Before I even moved to London,” Burton says, “those guys at Adult Swim were pushing work my way. I had it at the back of my mind, though, that some of those characters could form the basis of a separate project.” When Burton mentioned the idea to Dumile, the rapper needed no persuading. Using the characters as a loose basis for Doom’s doleful rapping style, The Mouse and the Mask oscillates between the second and third dimensions with balletic ease.

“Right now, he’s my favourite rapper in the world,” says Burton. “What Doom does with language is insane. There’s no waste. If you listen to one of his rhymes and you don’t quite understand a phrase, Google it and it will invariably be a reference to some 1930s film or some obscure pop-culture reference.”

The respect, it seems, is mutual. “This guy, Danger,” says Doom, “he’s a genius. I thought this album was a far-fetched idea from the off, but next thing I know we’re having meetings and we’re receiving specially recorded tapes from the characters in the shows.”

It has always been one of hip-hop’s more peculiar dichotomies that the more childlike it became, the cleverer it got. The startling retreat from the goofy positivism of the Native Tongues collective — De La Soul, the Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest — into the firearm-wielding, pimp-rolling rhymes favoured by fellow New Yorkers such as Mobb Deep and 50 Cent has marginalised many of rap’s key original players.

For the resolutely independent Doom, the hip-hop mainstream is welcome to its pet subjects. “If that level of recognition mattered to me, I’d lose the mask, right? I don’t lose any sleep over the way rap has gone. It’s no different to the way Hollywood is always in the market for a little sex and violence. People seem to be intrigued by that stuff. It’s just that it’s a little obvious.”

“I know where it’s coming from,” Burton says, “but even when early innovators like Eric B & Rakim appeared on their records with the big chains and holding money in their hands, it seemed . . .” He sighs. If a single shrug could say, “I understand your socio-economic reasons, but it’s still gauche”, Burton might have just dispensed it.