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" &amp;quot;Going cuckoo and kooky as Kool Keith/But I&amp;#039;m actually weirder than you think.&amp;quot; \u2014Eminem, &amp;quot;The Monster&amp;quot; (2013) Like David Lynch&amp;#039;s Mulholland Drive, the streets of the Bronx have steered Kool Keith&amp;#039;s wild heart into a lost highway of sex, money, murder, madness, breakbeats, and the elevated graffiti of subterranean nightmares. From the noir-stained stick-up kids (the late Larry Davis, the Casanovas and Wild Cowboys crews) to the rap pharmacists addicting a generation of microphone fiends (DJ Hollywood, Grandmaster Flash, Grand Wizzard Theodore, Grandmaster Caz and The Cold Crush Brothers, Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation, Chief Rocker Busy Bee, and KRS-One), Keith Thornton has seen it all. If the Bronx is the materfamilias of hip-hop, then Kool Keith is its Native Sun. Or maybe its Eraserhead. For three decades, the founder of the groundbreaking Ultramagnetic MCs has continued to dodge obsolescence by constantly changing identity. Employing an array of schizzy personas \u2014 Black Elvis, Dr. Octagon, Dr. Dooom, Dr. Ultra, Crazy Lou, and Poppa Large \u2014 Kool Keith has influenced a generation of emcees and movements including Outkast, Tyler the Creator&amp;#039;s Odd Future, Childish Gambino, Kanye West, A$AP Rocky, and even Eminem, who shouts him out on his number-one new single, &amp;quot;Monster.&amp;quot; Many hip-hop heads say Kool Keith is a genius. Others contend that &amp;quot;Ock&amp;quot; might&amp;#039;ve smoked too much zoobang at the Black Door Club on Boston Road back in the day. But there is something about Kool Keith&amp;#039;s weird vibe that&amp;#039;s both futurist and vintage, a synaptic power drill that continues to shape the game. Here are my seven reasons why the Black Elvis continues to keep hip-hop all shook up. &amp;quot;Traveling at the Speed of Thought&amp;quot; (1986)      Like Sun Ra, P-Funk, and Soulsonic Force, Kool Keith&amp;#039;s Ultramagnetic MCs launched the dystopia of the hood into deep space with the 1986 single &amp;quot;Traveling at the Speed of Thought.&amp;quot; Comprised of Keith, Ced Gee, TR Love, and Moe Love, the Ultramagnetics exited a lyrical wasteland littered with jeeps, gold chains, and crack-fueled bravado. In addition to Kool Keith&amp;#039;s frenetic wordplay, Cedric &amp;quot;Ced Gee&amp;quot; Miller emerged as a forerunner in grafting both live instrumentation and the SP-1200 sampler into an organic whole. It&amp;#039;s no wonder KRS-One \u2014 who was almost a member of Ultramagnetic MCs early on \u2014 brought Ced Gee on to produce the bulk of his 1987 Criminal Minded album. The &amp;quot;Traveling&amp;quot; clip reminds me of Outkast&amp;#039;s ATLiens leap over the Cristal and Cartier crews a decade later. Maybe this was Keith and Ultramagnetics&amp;#039; hip-hop tenet: Sometimes you have to blast off to show the haters how to really get down. &amp;quot;Plastic World&amp;quot; (1997)       A generation prior to Tyler the Creator scarfing down a water bug to the tune of 64 million YouTube views, Kool Keith donned a plastic Elvis/Devo pompadour and used &amp;quot;Plastic World&amp;quot; to flip hip-hop on its head. Jason Goldwatch&amp;#039;s clip displays Keith&amp;#039;s Mummenschanz as MC mockery. Bursting into a hotel suite filled with condescending money-flippers and champagne-sippers, a Caped Crusader Keith proclaims, &amp;quot;Producers filtering/joining with R&amp;amp;amp;B/a million rappers/some clones trying to sound like me,&amp;quot; in a discordantly staccato elocution, which could be a reference vocal for Eminem&amp;#039;s 1999 &amp;quot;My Name Is&amp;quot; debut. And as for the video&amp;#039;s coda, in which Kool Keith and a faux-Michael Jackson are locking and popping while eating Kix cereal? Dope. &amp;quot;3000&amp;quot; (1996)      Kool Keith&amp;#039;sDr. Octagonecologystalbum (1996) could be considered both his psychotic break and rap&amp;#039;s Tommy. As Dr. Octagon \u2014 a murderous surgeon, gynecologist, and eon-tripper \u2014 Kool Keith has written the libretto for a gory, surrealist sci-fi/porn hip-hopera, scored by Dan the Automator and KutMasta Kurt. Listening to tracks like &amp;quot;Blue Flowers&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;3000,&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m transported back to 1977,numbered among the crowd standing outside of the &amp;quot;Renny&amp;quot; on 138th Street and 7th in Harlem, after a group of Lenox Ave gun-clappers caused a stampede at DJ Eddie Cheeba&amp;#039;s show. Kool Keith&amp;#039;s Grand Guignolis a grotesquerie not intended for the squeamish, but as a cultural bridge between hip-hop&amp;#039;s past (the album&amp;#039;s epilogue, &amp;quot;1977&amp;quot;) and future (&amp;quot;3000,&amp;quot; the album&amp;#039;s intro), it is a pop masterpiece. &amp;quot;Diamonds&amp;quot; (2000)      &amp;quot;Look at the bottom of your car/now start it... send the coffin up to Billboard with flowers in the lobby/picture me with Gene Griffin holding hand grenades/I&amp;#039;ma fax you a copy...&amp;quot;Kool Keith&amp;#039;s Matthew (2000) is a cri de guerre against the industry&amp;#039;s co-opting of hip-hop into something corporate, calculating, and cornball. While some dismissed Matthew as lackluster, Kool Keith and KutMasta Kurt&amp;#039;s spartan, MPC60 shuffle paid homage to pioneers like Mantronix, Arthur Baker, Davy DMX, and Teddy Riley. It&amp;#039;s an explosion of syncopated shrapnel that reverberates on Timbaland&amp;#039;s infectious Jay-Z track &amp;quot;Tom Ford.&amp;quot; Except songs like &amp;quot;Diamonds,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;F-U M.F.,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Operation Extortion,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;I Don&amp;#039;t Believe You&amp;quot; are not shouting out Fashion Week&amp;#039;s Finest. Matthewfunctions as street-corner caveat to an unsuspecting audience, warning them that the only difference between a gangster and a gangsta is an expense account. &amp;quot;We All Over&amp;quot; (2001)       Although this 2001 noggin-knocker is actually a cut from KutMasta Kurt&amp;#039;s (Kool Keith&amp;#039;s longtime producer and musical collaborator) Masters of Illusion LP, Keith owns this track, along with the Bay Area flame-thrower Motion Man. Think Pete Rock meets Premo meets the RZA meets Easy Mo Bee, with a sample of Spoonie Gee&amp;#039;s 1979 &amp;quot;Love Rap&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;Come on Spoonie Gee/ah-go-off-ah-go-off&amp;quot;)driving the kick and snare into a groove hotter than burnt fish grease. It&amp;#039;s almost as if Kool Keith could rap about anything \u2014 drug deals, toilet paper, Al Sharpton starting an NBA franchise in Compton (come to think of it, those are some actual rhymes of his) \u2014 and make it sound like a party-starter. &amp;quot;Grandma&amp;#039;s Boyee&amp;quot; (2006)      When I first listened to &amp;quot;Grandma&amp;#039;s Boyee,&amp;quot; I almost thought it was Kool Keith&amp;#039;s twist on the Nas/DJ Premier classic &amp;quot;2nd Childhood&amp;quot; (2001). This thirtysomething corner boy moves in with Gran-Gran, who pilfers his kush for her afternoon teas, before breast-feeding him at bedtime. Over-the-top, but still quintessentially weird Kool Keith. After I found out that it was part of the soundtrack of the Adam Sandler-produced stoner-satire Grandma&amp;#039;s Boy, I knew this was one of Kool Keith&amp;#039;s most traditional and dopest tracks. Keith and KutMasta Kurt trip the Roland 808 fantastic on this jawn, replete with Super Mario bleeps and a bass drum that kicks harder than Bruce Lee.  &amp;quot;Goodbye, Rap&amp;quot; (2012)      &amp;quot;This song is the last song/I quit rap/couldn&amp;#039;t find competition/I threw hip-hop in the garbage/the Rock Hall of Fame/had to pay homage...&amp;quot; Let&amp;#039;s face it, when a star retires, it&amp;#039;s not really an end, but a beginning. Think of Sinatra in &amp;#039;71 and Jigga in &amp;#039;03. Their farewells were really opulent deus ex machinas disguised as dazzling narcissistic finis: I&amp;#039;m finna leave to see how much y&amp;#039;all really love me. Kool Keith&amp;#039;s elegiac &amp;quot;Goodbye, Rap&amp;quot; (from his 2012 retirement album Love &amp;amp;amp; Danger) was more hip-hop eulogy than a narrative of his departure. Rocking his trademark lumberjack hat and rubbing on the generous cakes of a sexy Latina, Keith&amp;#039;s eyes are dimmed by hip-hop&amp;#039;s betrayal. &amp;quot;First-class flight/I&amp;#039;m leaving emcees to battle over who&amp;#039;s the best,&amp;quot; Keith sadly intones. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m gone/to a secret shelter in space/an astronaut ready to take off.&amp;quot; Of course, Kool Keith is not going anywhere. The architect of modern hip-hop knows there&amp;#039;s no place like home. Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a26563/kool-keith-changed-hip-hop/>