Kool Keith Tim Dog Big Time
Photo by Jason PersseKool Keith is one of hip-hop’s most entertaining eccentrics. The maverick Bronx-based rapper was the show-stealing voice in the Ultramagnetic MCs, a golden era quartet whose 1988 debut, Critical Beatdown, combined breakbeat science with abstract and futuristic lyrics. Since going solo, Keith’s embraced a startling number of aliases over a three decades-long career, creating characters like Black Elvis, Fly Ricky The Wine Taster, and the infamous Dr. Octagon, a deviant gynecologist from Jupiter who has a fondness for diagnosing ailments like “bees flying around your rectum.”Beyond his lyrical strangeness, the depth of Kool Keith’s discography can also be tricky to navigate—so we’ve pearled through his Bandcamp vault to pick out six sure shots to get you acclimated to the off-kilter, kooky, and brilliant world of this oddball MC. Kool KeithIf you’re new to the wit, wisdom, and absurdities of Kool Keith, Feature Magnetic is a solid entry point into his discography. Released in 2016, each of the 15 tracks pairs Keith with a guest rapper, giving the album a tributary feel. Keith steps into the booth with his old Cenobites spar Godfather Don on the dusky, piano spiked “Stratocaster”; heads back to the golden era with Craig G on “MC Voltron”; and highlights the independent rap mentality he helped foster on the melancholy “Peer Pressure” with Atmosphere’s Slug.The standout moment on Feature Magnetic is literally a case of fantasy worlds colliding when Keith collaborates with MF Doom for the spacey “Super Hero.” As two MCs who excel at bringing the listener into fictional realms, Keith nods to his Dr.
Dooom persona and sketches a scene that involves the X-Men sitting around drinking tea while Spiderman peeps Doctor Octopus “spitting off the top of a New York City bus.” Bringing the track home, MF Doom attends a guest list-only “heroes-hustlers convention” where he ends up sipping “She-Hulk milk” as the Marvel character sports a Hello Kitty catsuit. Of course, in Keith and Doom’s world, such events are an everyday occurrence. DooomKool Keith debuted his Dr. Octagon persona in 1996 to wide acclaim—then created a new character to strip Octagon of his crown.
Dooom, who opens 1998’s First Come, First Served by hoodwinking Dr. Octagon into an operating room under the guise of treating a patient with rabies. Inside, Octagon is confronted by Dr. Dooom, who mercilessly dispatches him with a shotgun.Having killed off his prior alter ego—which can also be taken as commentary on the way the Dr. Octagon album was labelled as an alternative rap album—Keith fleshes out the Dr.
Dooom character into a cannibalistic serial killer who dwells in some of the most unsanitary housing projects imaginable. (It’s no surprise the album cover art, by Pen & Pixel, stars a hamburger with a rat in it.) On “Housing Authority,” he introduces himself as “Dr. Dooom from the Bronx / Rappers get petro / See me with the black afro,” before namedropping local block names and boasting that he’s cavorting with Rosie Perez.Going deeper into Dr. Dooom’s lair, “Welfare Love” is a romance of sorts that’s set against a backdrop of babies running around with dirty diapers, meals based around peanut butter sandwiches, and Kool-Aid.
Kool Keith Tim Dog Big Time Youtube
Matching this grimy environment, KutMasta Kurt’s production broods with ominous chimes and creepy synth riffs, which helps ensure First Come, First Served is one of Keith’s most cohesive outings. UltraUltra is a duo consisting of Kool Keith and Tim Dog, another Bronx-based straight-talking rapper who once upped the dis war stakes by striking out at an entire city on the incendiary “Fuck Compton.” The singular focus of 1996’s Big Time is the two artists’ moral opposition to wack rappers: The album opens with Keith calling up Tim and informing him they need to record an album together to redress the amount of subpar MCs littering up the scene. Under the duo’s moral code, wackness is a hip-hop sin.“Super Luv” pushes home this point. It starts with Keith asked by a magazine interviewer why he always refers “to the words anal and rectum and why do you always use the words doo doo and pee pee?” Keith’s answer is blunt: “Because that’s what the whole fuckin’ rap industry is. Gta 4 infernus cheat.