Those who have seen Doug Pray's excellent film Scratch know that deejays can be a strange bunch. Miami's DJ Domination is a particularly silly fella who incorporates all types of body tricks into his performances, standing on his head, scratching with his cheek and spinning flames on his turntables. World Domination is an extremely amateurish DVD compilation of various exploits from Domination's career. While there is a decent amount of footage from Domination's world-class performances, the DVD's running time is bogged down with random travel footage in Japan, Latin America (including an appearance on Sabado Gigante), and around the US.

While he may be silly, he's not quite as clever as he wants to be: Observations on Japanese culture are boring and a tour through New York's Sam Ash music supply store is just an opportunity to plug his favorite brands. There's no coherence to the piece and nothing that makes it truly compelling. In fact, the one opportunity for real heat, a proposed DJ duel between Domination and Roc Raida of the X-Ecutioners (profiled in Scratch) ends in a supposed no-show from Roc Raida. While Domination's reason for including this segment is to show that he's so bad-ass that even legends dare not challenge him, it leaves the viewer to wonder "when the hell is something going to happen?"

Unfortunately the performance segments aren't that interesting either. Often random beats are dubbed over grainy footage of Domination hanging upside-down over his decks (I assume that either the sound quality was too low or he was concerned about rights issues.) Even more problematic is that when Domination's cutting is featured it's not really that impressive (to this viewer at least.) Whereas other deejays use their skills to create music, Domination is mostly showing off how fast his hands are. Watching him manipulate records and faders is impressive but you'd never just kick back and listen to the stuttery sounds he creates. Maybe it's a different style, but I like the way a Kid Koala or Qbert will take a beat, shuffle it around, and make a new song out of it in real time. Domination just makes a mess, to my ears.

But that's just a preference. As far as his skills as a documentarian, there's no doubt that he's lacking. He does his own Cribs-style tour of his tacky house and plays out weird skits like one where he battles a hibachi-style Japanese chef. There are also endless shoutouts from hip hop and sports stars proclaiming Domination the best DJ in the world (but looking very much like he just cornered them at the Source awards or something.) Among these clips is a quick shot of Destiny's Child back when the group had four members, so you know this footage has been sitting around for a while. For me the only worthwhile segment had Domination teaching some tricks of the trade, but this segment only starts about an hour into the show and lasts just a few minutes. There are other instructional programs available from equally (or more) accomplished performers that get into much better detail.

VIDEO:
Just bootleg-quality camcorder footage. It's understandable in the archival footage from Domination's teenage years, but if he's as bling bling as he claims he should invest in a better video camera for his new footage. Just awful.

AUDIO:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is just a blaring, treble-heavy mess. The surrounds seem to just mimic the fronts and the bland music often drowns out the voices.

EXTRAS:
Outtakes and bloopers. Not that interesting.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
World Domination is for huge Domination fans only. I don't know why I watched the entire thing. It's boring and contains very little actual musical content.