Here’s something that wasn’t on our collective bingo card for 2026 – Chuck D has made a collab album with Doors drummer John Densmore.
The album is called No Country For Old Men – well, they’re 65 and 81 years old respectively – and it comes out under the name doPE, taking the first two letters of Doors and the initials of Public Enemy. It’s out on Record Store Day, which is April 18 this year, and the lead single Every Tick Tick Tick has been made Record Store Day Song Of The Year for 2026.
And indeed, RSD was the reason this unlikely pair got together in the first place. Chuck and Densmore found themselves on an RSD panel together in 2014. Later that year D emailed the drummer, saying "You’ve got the beats, I’ve got the rhymes, let’s make doPE." Now a decade later they’ve finally made good on the idea.
The project began by D and Densmore trading ideas and lyrics between them, with a phrase of the ex-Door’s - "Everybody gets older, but not everybody gets elder” providing the theme and inspiring the title of the album.
In a statement, the pair called the album “a meditation on responsibility, legacy and the bond between generations” with Chuck adding that "John Densmore’s beat isn’t just rhythm, it’s history talking. He's been scoring moments of our culture for decades, and that wisdom hits different when it meets the now. This collaboration is about locking generations together and pushing sound forward."
Chuck D has, of course, a long history of collaboration and has appeared on records by artists as varied as Anthrax, Sonic Youth, Isaac Hayes and Meat Loaf. He was also a part of rap/ rock collaborative projects Prophets Of Rage and the brilliantly-named Confrontation Camp earlier this century.
And incredibly this won’t be the first time there’s been a hip hop/ Doors collaboration. Back in 2013, the rapper Tech N9ne released an updated version of Strange Days, keeping Jim Morrison’s vocals but adding new instrumentation from Densmore, Robbie Krieger and Ray Manzarek. Few will remember it, but it was certainly… different.
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