21st Century Schizoid MC:
Who Is Kool Keith? Shedding His Various Incarnations, Hip Hop's Rubber-Room Rapper Reveals the Real MC.

If you’ve ever cast a fly-fishing reel into the toxic muck near Bayonne, N.J., then you’ve probably been blessed with patience enough to wait for Kool Keith to show up at one of his gigs.

Two years ago, using the MC de plume Dr. Octagon, Keith tested my endurance and that of a New York City club crowd by arriving two hours after his scheduled stage time. He may be less reliable than a rusty Duracell, I thought, but Kool Keith’s verbal dexterity is tough to beat.

Besides, I’d be happy to gawk at an emotionally unstable, one-burger-shy-of-a-Happy-Meal hip-hop quasi-legend; somehow that would make me feel better. Indeed, when watching a Kool Keith performance – as with auto racing, netless high-wire acts and TV interviews with Burt Reynolds – the lure lies in the possibility of witnessing a crack-up in the public domain.

In the early ’90s, as the lightning quick verb-man fronting Ultramagnetic MCs, Kool Keith furthered this Bellevue B-boy rep by occasionally performing in a straightjacket. As a solo act years later, he continued the Houdini theme by disappearing altogether, frequently blowing off gigs and painting a convincing portrait of the troubled artist as a young man.

I dunno, maybe it’s got something to do with the people he’s surrounded himself with, but Keith’s infamous multiple personalities – part macabre Marcus Welby (Dr. Octagon), part booty-squeezin’ porn-core star (Dr. Dooom) and now part donut-dipping Black Elvis – have indeed puzzled, humored and flat-out offended the public.

But such relentless polymorphing has provided a garden of otherwordly delights through which the Bronx-born Keith Thornton mines, providing endless subject matter for an unstoppable flow of records – two in the last six months, five in the last three years.

But, really, how crazy is he? Well, if Keith were your neighbor, you’d invest in a double-bolt lock. But it doesn’t matter, really. It’s likely that much of Keith’s one-oar-in-the-water reputation is pure satire. But the point is: How crazy do people think he is? On this night two years ago, while waiting for Keith’s posse of one to arrive, I conducted a crack audience-poll. From the mostly benign folks I spoke with, Keith was recognized as the Rapper Most Likely To Go Van Gogh. And since we humans always sympathize with our earless, nut-house brethren, we can’t hold them accountable to such mundane and formal constructs such as time, can we?

On a muggy New York evening two years later, however, Kool Keith is working for Columbia Records. The occasion? An industry listening party in a Manhattan West Village nightclub for Keith’s latest major label foray, Lost in Space (Red Ink/Columbia). The few backpack-toting hip-hop heads in the room are drawn by the unveiling of Black Elvis, the latest riddle offering from Keith’s unbridled id.

“He’s like a specimen,” says DJ Kutmasta Kurt, who’s toured with and produced for Keith a handful of tracks since 1995. “People just want to see him and see what he’s going to do. They want to see a guy come out in his underwear and start peeing on the audience.”

At 8:30, hooting commences as Kool Keith walks up the three side-steps on to a small stage in the middle of the room, raises his arms, and starts a slow rhythmic flutter as Kutmasta Kurt drops a large kick drum to begin an Ultramagnetic MCs medley. Wearing a red football jersey and black shorts cut below the knee, Kool Keith adheres to a casual, comfortable hip-hop dress code. But that wig, oh, that wig.

The wig, a thin black rubber piece with sideburn extensions, dominates Keith’s shaved head. At first glance, it’s as if two mated wrens have built a nest on his dome and dormered the area above his forehead. With a flowing red cape that completes the package, Keith cuts the image of a life-size action doll. I keep craning my neck to see if there’s a small plastic ring attached to a string in the middle of his back, which, when pulled, would prompt Keith’s rapid-fire, free-association rhymes about the original monster of the Mr. Softee ice cream truck or bees flying around a rectum.

After a fists-in-the-air “Poppa Large,” the 1992 Ultramagnetic single, the stage goes silent. Keith bounds about with his head down, both hands on the microphone. The audience waits. Maybe now he’ll do something crazy.

“I’m tired of this baseball cap-wearing B-boy bullshit,” Keith says into his microphone, before looking out to the crowd. “Can we move on?”

A collective drone of approval emanates from the audience.

“I’m tired of that B-boy shit. And you radio PDs, y’all want Aretha Franklin to come back, or some Rick James shit. Are we ready to advance?”

The drone again murmurs its approval.

“You know what I’m sayin’?” he implores. “You know what I’m sayin’?”

Keith turns and walks toward the DJ, then spins on the ball of his sneaker and faces the audience again. “You know what I’m sayin’?”

We know what you’re sayin’ – most of the time. Advancement, in Keith’s mind, is necessary because rappers have been nipping his shit for more than a decade. Currently, Keith inveighs against “posers and fronters” and those who appear in videos “with fish-lens effects.” It’s really not all that different from the boasts he spat out more than 10 years ago with the Ultramagnetic MCs.

On the MC’s debut record, 1988’s Critical Beatdown, Keith busted on wack MCs and commercial hip hop, while celebrating his own verbal fluency, a hip-hop rite of passage since Day 1, of course.

But somehow, Kool Keith’s boasts cut sharper. His detail-rich imagery resonated, his accent on the off beat and non-rhyming schemes stood out, his metaphors were pungent and his dense flow had the stamp of genius. Sure, KRS-One and Rakim kicked more social relevance, Chuck D more heavy-hitting polemics, but nobody at the time could match Kool Keith’s jab.

Meanwhile, Boogie Down Productions, Eric B and Rakim, Mantronix, Marley Marl and the Bomb Squad were providing the cream for late ’80s New York-style hip hop. With the greater editing flexibility provided by the newly-available E-Mu SP-12 and Akai S900 samplers, these camps poured forth adventurous, thickly layered productions that were imbued with the crackle and graininess that kept it “real,” or underground.

Besides providing an obvious sonic blueprint for much of current day hip hop, these records also found their way onto countless white labels in the mid-’90s British breakbeat scene.

“All those [British breakbeat] guys have white labels in their collections where Keith’s voice is sampled,” says Kutmasta Kurt. “Either his voice is taken or that whole song is sped up to 45 speed. There must be nearly 30 white label records that have sampled ‘Poppa Large.’ It’s like an anthem in the British breakbeat scene.”

So when Liam Howlett looped Keith’s “Smack My Bitch Up” vocal on the 1997 Prodigy single, it repaid the debt that British techno owes Keith and the Magnetics – while also inflaming feminists who long ago dismissed American hip hop for the same misogynist reasons.

Keith certainly wasn’t adversely affected by the controversy. Since then, he’s rapped on The Hardkiss Brothers’ “Abandon Ship” for MTV’s Amp 2 (Astralwerks) and he’s contributing to three tracks on the upcoming Beck record. In the world of Marshall McLuhan, Kool Keith is hot.

“I think Keith really appeals to the techno crowd,” says Tim Devine, Columbia’s senior vice president of A&R. “His abstract rhyming style and futuristic themes have links with some of the early American techno music.”

Which brings us to Keith’s latest, a self-produced double concept album that features the major label debut of both Kool Keith and Black Elvis.

From the control-room confusion of “Lost in Space” to the Farfisa organ and looped single-string banjo of “Livin Astro” – the first single, where he introduces Black Elvis – Keith’s production skills may not be on par with his rhyming, which is in fine multi-syllabic form. Missing is the murky echoes, phat beats and flatulent bass from The Automator and Kutmasta Kurt, who produced most of the two previous Keith releases, although the vocoder-drenched “Master of the Game,” with the indelible stamp from the late Roger Troutman, is a nice touch. He can call himself anyone he wishes, but it’s Keith’s production rep that’s on the line.

“We knew this would be Keith’s first foray going out under his own name,” says Devine. “And originally he thought he should call his album Lost in Space, and then he came up with the character of Black Elvis. So I figured why not come up with a double concept album?”

Why not? DJ Times caught up with the original rubber-room rapper via the telephone.

Kool Keith: [To publicist] Maybe we’ll have lunch someday…Hello?

DJ Times: Hey there Keith, this is Brian from DJ Times…

Kool Keith: Well, hi Brian, whassup Bri-yan? Is that magazine I see on the stands on Hollywood and Cahuenga?

DJ Times: Are you in L.A.?

Kool Keith: I’m right here in New York Ci-tay…

DJ Times: Alright. Before we explore your schizophrenia, I was wondering about the production of the record. You were behind the boards for this one. Do you have a preference for a particular drum machine?

Kool Keith: I use the Akai mainly, and the MPC-60 sampler…and the rest is all me. I don’t use the average Top-40 equipment to make a record. I think I use a lot of things that maybe a lot of the drum-n-bass kids be using, or the techno kids. It’s not like I’m using the same equipment that the industry is using.

DJ Times: Like…?

Kool Keith: The Trinity, the Mirage, stock-sound keyboards. Nobody’s really doing anything original. Nothing is being twisted, in terms of analog sounds and stuff. It’s basically everyone using a lot of stock sounds. There’s nothing being made manually. It’s all what comes with stock.

DJ Times: Are you putting your keyboards through effects?

Kool Keith: I’m into different stuff. It varies from Moog stuff to the Roland, to the Nord. The sounds are made by twisting knobs – once you turn the button, the sound is gone. No presets. Everybody is using stuff that’s already in their boards. I think that’s why my album is different – the sounds are custom-made. You can hear stock-stuff on 10 or 20 albums nowadays. With the Kool Keith album, half of the sounds will not be on any album.

DJ Times: Are you building tracks with the beats first?

Kool Keith: I don’t do beats first. What I really noticed the last two years is that all the groups now are starting from the treble stuff, high end. Everybody’s more light with the music now. It’s the new trend. My thing now is I’m into basslines now. That was my whole driven force, basslines. New York I notice is not even on basslines no more. The Midwest and the South starts from bass lines.

DJ Times: Like Outkast.

Kool Keith: Yeah, up north is more highs and drums, and I think I got out of that phase from Ultra, which is we done the beats and the 808s regular. I think the patches that I use now for my basslines are totally different from anybody’s patches and basslines. I have a great album more because of the ugly patches and basses – that was always a theme of mine. If you notice the funk we had on past albums we did with Ultra, even with some of the Dr. Dooom, the significant thing is the basslines. I’ve been a bassline person for years. I play bass. I’m into bass synthesizers, bass sounds. Bass has been the great starter for me making my records.

DJ Times: If I told an engineer I wanted “ugly” bass sounds, what would he do?

Kool Keith: I think the patches I use are more masculine patches, whereas maybe a lot of groups now are using feminine patches, using a lot of little violins, a lot of more or less aggressive bass patterns. Everything is very soft and light.

DJ Times: Are you using dirty patches?

Kool Keith: I’m into patches and making patches and tuning them to be meaner. If you notice a lot of the stuff I use sound real tense – dark and creepy. I’m not out here making soft stuff. Ninety-nine-percent of the industry is doing the soft stuff. Everything coming out now is trying to be radio friendly. It’s good to do a track that’s smooth, but everything now is very soft and fluffy. I think now the industry has had a good run of that stuff – you had the violin year, you had the piano year, the upright bass year. Remember that? When Dres from Black Sheep, and Tribe had the upright bass year. I think it needs to come back to some funky basslines, aggressive basslines, not some Frankie Beverly “Before I Let Go”-type of soft bass.

New York is unfunky right now. I swear to God. Everything I’m hearing is very feminine sounding. I mean the lyrics are hard – the different rappers are saying stuff – but the music context is not matching the tense of the rhyme. It’s like mine rapping over some Mary Poppins stuff.

DJ Times: How radio-friendly do you want to be, while you’re producing in the studio? How clean do you want it?

Kool Keith: I stay in the era of all the sounds. People say, that’s still the era of Keith in the past, that’s ’til dark, Ultra was making mean type of sounds; it still reflects that brotherlyhood. I mean, you go each album, Octagon doesn’t sound like shit in the industry. Critical Beatdown doesn’t sound shit in the industry. Dr. Dooom doesn’t. Sex Doll doesn’t. You can go from different ranges. It sounds all different from Kool Keith stuff, but…those albums all sound totally different from the stuff that was out in the industry [at that time], because that was all stock.

DJ Times: What about your samples?

Kool Keith: I use drums that everybody uses, but the drums are toned different. But I think my elements and ear candy around the music is not like everybody else’s stuff…

DJ Times: Yeah, you got some really cool farting noises on “Keith Turbo.”

Kool Keith: It’s just different things…I don’t know, I don’t hear a happy feminine sound when I’m in the studio. The influence I get when I’m making records is, more, I came up on Cameo, Slave, Dazz Band, Mandrill. I didn’t come up on jazz. It kind of shocked me, too, in the past when a lot of producers wanted to do my album, but they had jazz influences. It’s like, I never grew up listening to jazz. I wasn’t with the Sonny Stitt collection, Ron Carter shit. To me, that’s cool for people who do that stuff, but that’s not my level. I’m not going to lie to myself and my instincts – I didn’t grow up on that music. So why should I work with a jazz artist? So when you look at Premier and Guru, they grew up on jazz, naturally. A lot of groups out here did not grow up on jazz naturally. I’m not going to lie. I grew up listening to Rick James and stuff. I’m not going to lie to myself and say I’m a jazz-oriented artist. And I think a lot of the new people are very upset with that…know what I’m saying?

DJ Times: Sure, but…

Kool Keith: Know what I’m saying?

DJ Times: Did you ever..

Kool Keith: Know what I’m saying?

DJ Times: I think I know what you’re saying, yeah. You’ve worked with Premier, right?

Kool Keith: Premier is cool. I spoke to Premier. I respect the sound that they do, but I don’t respect the sound that others copied. You got millions of groups based around Premier’s sound now. I know he has to feel kind of bad because his sound is being totally duplicated now at an all-time high by a lot of clones and people doing a lot of Premier wannabe-type shit, groups just following Gang Starr’s whole aura. At least I have respect to not steal his stuff and do beats exactly like him. I listen to everybody to a certain extent. I can listen to Timbaland and not have to steal his stuff. I can listen to R. Kelly and not steal his stuff. Other groups are using a lot of the main groups as a foundation. It’s like my images are being stolen…

DJ Times: What’s with the images?

Kool Keith: It makes me change a lot. When I look at some artists, different labels, from Def Jam to MCA to loud to Epic, a lot of rappers have at least used something I’ve done already. As I see as a spin-off of some shit I’ve already done. For instance, I saw a video the other day on BET, I seen some people had a totally relateable issue. I seen somebody had from Dr. Dooom influenced the “Friday the 13th” thing. I seen groups take that whole aura to a different effect. I seen a video one day where somebody had a whole – remember “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”? – I seen a video where somebody used “Dr. Giggles.” I seen a video where somebody used “Carrie,” and I seen a video where somebody used “The Shining.” And I was like, “This shit is all a pinch of some stuff that I’m doing.”

DJ Times: With your lyrics, are you character acting?

Kool Keith: I don’t go out and try to be a character. You got people come in a video dressed like Freddie Krueger – but they’re stealing Freddie Krueger’s shit. I’ll make up The Phantom Man or something. I’ll make my own characters, whereas a lot of the rappers out there now, they’ve gotta steal other motherfucker’s characters to be somebody. They gotta go out and act like Jason to be somebody. I’ll come up with Black Elvis, Reverend Tom, and they’ll all be different faces. I don’t go taking a character from television or some old show. I don’t go doing my video looking like Herman Munster or something.

DJ Times: Who is Black Elvis?

Kool Keith: Black Elvis is the opposite of Elvis Presley, because Elvis wore white stones. If you notice, the Black Elvis guy wears regular shirts. The Elvis thing is the last level for me to do as far as the status of a rapper. I’m no longer the average rapper with a baseball cap on, wearing a uniform outfit on, like a Levi’s suit, or a suit for R&B. It’s natural dress. I can wear a hockey jersey one day, tomorrow I can wear a leather jacket. A formal versatile image. It’s not programmed. The new rappers that are coming out, I think they try to hard to be different. Like, I wear a wig naturally with a shirt, and they like, “Oh that’s some Keith shit.” But you see a lot of groups come out and they force their images – they draw their face, cut their pants’ leg, put tattoos all over their chest. They try too hard. It’s not natural.

DJ Times: For “Smack My Bitch Up,” did you get paid nicely?

Kool Keith: It was really good. I think Prodigy is a good group.

DJ Times: How did it work out?

Kool Keith: There’s a lot of people out there I like. I love the Trackmasters, you know. When they did that Nas It Was Written album, it basically paid for my Mercedes Benz. They tried to use my voice and didn’t clear it. They thought I was one of those rappers that didn’t have his paperwork together. So every time he gets a check, I get a check – a big fat check. And I hope it sells a lot of records because it contributed to my bank account.

DJ Times: You’ve been sampled a bit, no?

Kool Keith: I think me and Rakim have the most sampled type of voices, for choruses and things like that.

DJ Times: On your web site you have an animal of the month. This month it’s the giraffe. Have you sampled a giraffe?

Kool Keith: The giraffe is my favorite animal. He’s a distinctive animal. A lot of people don’t really pay much attention to the giraffe. Plus, he’s a funny animal. The giraffe.

DJ Times: Are you taking this on the road?

Kool Keith: The giraffe? That would be ill. It’s hard to take a giraffe on the road. It’d be different.

DJ Times: Anybody you’d like to work with?

Kool Keith: [The late] Roger Troutman. I wanted to do an album with him since I was a little kid. It was like a dream come true thing. He was working with my friend, H-Bomb, out in California, and he was telling me about it. A lot of people didn’t know that Roger did a lot of independent records, a lot of kids from the South. I think he wanted to make records just being real to himself. If a guy with a little money from Cincinnati or Houston, called him and asked him to help, he wasn’t on no star trip.

DJ Times: What are your reasonable expectations for this Black Elvis album?

Kool Keith: I’m content because I did my own thing. I don’t look up to platinum success or anything like that. I look at a lot of successful artists and some of them have the worst life. Some of them are drug addicts. Some platinum artists don’t have any money. Some platinum artists are sick behind the scene and that’s why they’re on Jet magazine, ’cause they ain’t getting any royalty checks. I feel good that I took care of my paperwork and I get checks from all of my projects. I still get Critical Breakdown checks – great checks to take trips to go to Bermuda and Florida and pay rent on three apartments and live life and go to the mall. While you have some platinum artists that don’t have any life – they’re paying big producers, writers are taking their money, and they went through a bunch of shit. They sniff coke and they’re large, and it hurts. It would hurt me every day to be on BET and on magazine covers and on David Letterman and I don’t have a dime in my pocket. I would jump off a building.

Copyright © 1999 DJ Times Magazine
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