college radio throwdown, or what's wrong with kool keith

"is it a case of disliking an artist for his fans? "

yes. Keith's career output is spotty - there's as much crap as classics - but he's got a unique persona, you gotta give him credit for that.

I convinced someone of Keith's virtues vis a vis his rhymes like this: if his whole shtick is a joke, he's pretty funny. And if his schtick is serious, he's completely insane. Either way the entertainment value is fairly high.

keith produced some great early tuff crew tracks and the ultramagnetic mc's were great and his first solo album is great and some of the stuff after that is really wild and crazy and weird and he is a freak and who fuckin' cares who listens to him unless of course you listen to him in a room full of people who hate him and his fans. which isn't likely. holier than thou fans of any genre are usually stupid and boring and should be avoided at all costs.

I saw him live once. He came out in a space helmet (this was the Black Elvis/Lost in Space tour). He played a little bit. Then brought about 20 women from the audience onstage for "Girl, Let Me Touch You There." He proceeded to creepily walk around the girls, groping and whatnot. Then, after a couple more songs. He left that stage and his second banana/Flava Flav guy came out and said that Keith had decided that Minneapolis wasn't "hype" enough and we had to cheer. This went on for about 10 minutes and he never came back. Then after they closed the curtain on the stage, he crawled out from under it with a mic. The crowd cheered, as they thought he was doing an encore. Instead, he briefly told radio to "suck his dick" because they were too busy playing "fat-ass Chaka Khan and Patti LaBelle records." (Apparently Keith has not actually listened to R&B radio since the early 80s). I'm not sure what this show was, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't joking. (And I'm pretty sure he charged me 20 fucking bucks to see about 18 minutes of actual songs!)

In any case, I will second most of the praise of Ultra stuff (I even kinda like most of their one major label one and the Four Horsemen), also Dr. Oc, but that's about it. He seems to be getting worse by the year, from what I've heard (Sex Style, Matthew, that Analog Bros. record).

I've seen him in concert like five times now, and if the audience is acting like they give a shit, actually getting down and getting rowdy and shit (like '01 @ Headliners in Louisville fr'instance), he'll sometimes do a whole 45 minute set then come back out for another 45 minute set.

Almost everything he's ever recorded is freestyled.

S: Sex Style, Black Elvis/Lost In Space, Dr. Dooom, Lost Masters, Masters of Illusion, all Ultramagnetic MCs' shit, Cenobytes' shit, and especially KHM shit

D: Matthew (worst record he's ever done by far), Analog Bros., Spankmaster

I love his rhyme style, how he'll drop a word at the end of a rhyme scheme that doesn't rhyme, use that to kick into a different pattern, and then bring it back to the original one on the four-count. Shit like that. He's very subtle and talented with his delivery. Lyrically, on the other hand, he's everything but subtle.

nickalicious appraisal of his records = OTM. Tho I like a bunch of the songs on Spankmaster, definitely more than the Lost Masters, especially the drugs song and the more sci-fi shit ("Darth Vader watching DVDs with my new fader and may the force be witchoo!")

ha ha I forgot Doc Oc.

Black Elvis 2 comes out 2004.

eh, he's always saying a million sequels are coming out soon...

seriously, you don't like "Drugs" from "Spankmaster"? Where he just rattles off fantasies about doing insane amounts of, well, everything with the likes of Cuba Gooding Sr, Ike Turner, Miles Davis ad inifinitum? That shit cracks me up.

Oh no! "Drugs" is fucking great! There's quite a few good songs on that album really, and even a couple few good'uns on Matthew, I just don't think they're as solid as lots of his others.

And yeah, I'm always a bit suspicious of his "upcoming releases", but he manages to put out new stuff all the time, so I don't sweat it.

to me, he's the flipside of MF Doom. Doom was part of a political group, then took drugs, went weird, and is now about the most exciting person in hip hop, getting better with every release.
Keith was patr of a political group, took drugs, went weird, and is now the least relevant person in hip hop, getting worse with every release.

and don't try to tell me that even one verse on the Dr Octogon album was 'freestyled'.

"and don't try to tell me that even one verse on the Dr Octogon album was 'freestyled'. "

I don't see what's so impossible about this. Didn't they do that album in, like, two weeks?

and apart from not listing Dr. Octagon, nickalicious also overlooked one of my favorite Kool Keith releases: the ULTRA album with Tim Dog.

The motherfucker's got NO FACE!

I went to see him in Champaign, IL and the fucker never showed up. I guess he knew U of I wouldn't be 'hype' enough for him. (It was a tiny, tiny stage, at the end of a big bar. you could probably only fit 100 people in that room) Heard later, from my friend who was supposed to interview him after the show, that he was too busy doing weird things in Chicago hotel rooms to come down.

Anyway, NZA OTM. Dr. Dooom is very good. Masters of Illusion is great too, but I can't really remember how good Keith is on it---Kurt's production steals the show. It's one of the best engineered albums I own. Put it on if you're trying to test out a sound system.

I saw him once, and Ice-T spent the whole set on-stage with him. Keith threw fried chicken at the audience.