Kool Keith - Monsters - 12-INCH SINGLE [12 inch Vinyl Single]

Eliot Zigmund - Standard Fare [COMPACT DISCS] date 09/18/2012

It's been more than forty years since Kool Herc starting throwing parties in the South Bronx, and so you could forgive the casual fan for thinking that nearly every permutation of hip-hop has already been explored. But Keith, the new album from the iconic rapper Kool Keith and the master producer Psycho Les argues just the opposite that what's absurdly funny can also be sinister and strange, that the form can still be broken in new and radical ways. Keith is a laser-focused, remarkably vital work from two artists entering the fourth decades of their respective careers. If nothing else, take as an example a couple of the guests who appear here there's Jeru the Damaja, who represents the true-school ethos of New York in the early '90s, but there's also Paul Wall - he rides shotgun on InchFoot LockerInch - who broke through more than a decade after Jeru, as the woozy, laconic Houston scene of the mid-2000s briefly stole the national spotlight. Both serve as ideal foils for Keith they're somehow tethered to Earth as we understand it, while he's free to orbit around them, and us, in a path that only he will ever understand.

Kool Keith has long been hailed as hip-hop's greatest eccentric. Over the course of a career stretching back to the mid-'80s, he's perfected a singular style of abstract yet deadly precise rhyming that often focuses on subjects such as science fiction, hardcore pornography, and a distrust for the music industry. His sprawling discography includes numerous collaborations and aliases, with some of the most acclaimed including Dr. Octagon and Dr. Dooom, Black Elvis & Tashan Dorrsett. He began his career as the mind and mouth behind the Bronx-based Ultramagnetic MC's, whose influential debut, Critical Beatdown, was released in 1988. Following the of the band's third album in 1993, Keith headed for the outer reaches of the stratosphere with a variety of solo projects. His lyrical thematics remained as free-flowing as they ever were with the N.Y.C. trio, connecting up complex meters with fierce, layers-deep metaphors and veiled criticisms of those who Inchwater down the sound that comes from the ghettoInch. Keith's latest LP InchMr. ControllerInch entirely produced by Junkaz Lou is yet another work of art. No MC on the planet is so grimy and yet so polished - after years in the rap game, Kool Keith's as unique as ever.