Kool Keith as "Black Elvis"
Longevity is probably one of the hardest things to maintain in music—especially in hip-hop where styles change faster than Cardi B.’s hair and nails. That’s why it’s inspiring to see a veteran like Kool Keith still holding it down and doing his thang. A Bronx original with no father to his style, Keith’s abstract lyrical complexity and stream-of-consciousness approach to rhyming created his own lane—as hip-hop’s first wild card and court jester, always unpredictable and bizarre yet supremely entertaining. After shaking up the scene with his highly influential squad, Ultramagnetic, Keith left the group following Four Horsemen (Wild Pitch, 1993) to pursue a solo career that has garnered more than his fair share of success as well as many surprises along the way.
Aging like a fine wine, Keith has obviously been drinking from the same fountain as Madonna. Not only does his baby face appear more youthful than its 57 years, but like Madge, he has tapped into the power of reinvention. In 1994, fed up with the rap scene and the entire music industry, Keith escaped from New York, fleeing to the left coast. Initially, he went to hang out with Kut Masta Kurt, an up-and-coming Cali producer, who had sent him some dope beats. These turned into such songs as “Technical Difficulties,” and “Dr. Octagon,” an alter-ego developed by Keith to indulge in his eccentricities and porn fantasies. When Kurt’s friend and fellow producer, Dan the Automator, heard these tracks, he was convinced that they had a whole project and ended up producing the bulk of the full-length, Dr. Octagonecologyst (Bulk Recordings, 1996). Eventually picked up by Mo Wax in the UK and DreamWorks domestically, and re-released the following year, that album lit a slow-burning fuse in the underground, exposing Keith to a whole new audience, not as familiar with his early work, but loving the bizarre new direction in which he was heading.
The independent release of Dr. Octagon opened the floodgates of creativity for Keith, who dropped a slew of records in the ‘90s including Sex Style (1997) and First Come, First Served (1999), both produced by Kut Masta Kurt for his Funky Ass label; Black Elvis/Lost in Space (Columbia, 1999); and the self-produced Matthew (Funky Ass, 2000). Somehow, he also found time to get involved in several collaborations including the Cenobites (with Godfather Don), The Analog Brothers (with Ice-T and Mark Live), and Masters of Illusion (with Kurt). His output hardly flagged in the 2000s leading to his latest offering, 2019’s Keith (Mellow Music Group) produced by Psycho Les of the Beatnuts and featuring guest appearances by Cypress Hill’s B-Real as well as Jeru the Damaja and Paul Wall.
Defying the odds, Kool Keith offers proof positive that rap is not necessarily the young person’s game that it’s made out to be. Constantly reinventing himself and stretching the boundaries of the artform, he’s an MC’s MC who proves the ultimate rule of hip-hop: There ain’t no rules to this shit.
