Kool Keith Releases New Album Produced By Psycho Les

Back in my younger days, I worked at the housing facility of a liberal arts college that I was attending.  It was a cake position that, for the most part, felt like it was created just to provide jobs to those of us that claimed them.  When everyone moved out at the end of the year, there was a plenty to do, and you could pocket some quick loot to clean out the empty dorms and clear out all the filth that was left behind by residents.  During the regular year, however, there was an excess of downtime.  To fill our days, we’d find ourselves going out to remove outdated flyers from bulletin boards, look for graffiti to spray off with some corrosive wonder chemical (don’t worry, nobody put up any legit pieces; it was all just scribbled garbage), or doing things like offering to sweep the stairs that led up to buildings — one of which was my co-workers dorm that, once we’d reach, we’d simply smoke tough in and watch Parliament interviews about them encountering UFOs, or listen to old funk albums like Mandrill or Bootsy’s Rubber Band.  Occasionally, you’d find leftover items that you could claim.  On one momentous occasion I found a Discman, which I began using to play Kool Keith, taking my productivity and enjoyment at work to a new plateau.

The policy was that you had to wait 2 weeks to allow the original owner time to claim their abandoned items, but, after that, it was yours.  Before that grace period was up, however, I was told that I could just take the damn thing.  One thing that I’d been doing at housing was vacuuming indoor stairs with a large contraption on my back like Peter Venkman.  It was fine for what it was, but not any less mind-numbing than anything else around there.  Once I started using that Discman and to bump Black Elvis/Lost In Space every day, it changed my entire experience.  I’d slap on the headphones, stroll around with my faux proton back, hunting down dirt like I was patrolling a space funk USCSS Nostromo.  This was probably around 2001, which means that, in all likelihood, the first generation iPod hadn’t even been released, yet — plus, I’m late as fuck on all that sort of stuff anyway.  Finding that portable CD player reminded me what it was like to have a personal soundtrack and what that can do for your disposition.  Black Elvis was mine.  One day, I came back from my rounds and was told that I had to return my new device.  The bullshit part was that it wasn’t even the owner that came to claim it.  That would be one thing, but this was someone who said they knew them or was their roommate, or something to that questionable effect.  Seemed iffy, but…  Okay.  No problem.  I’d saved everything else that I’d found along with it, which included some empty CD cases and a bottle of Astroglide personal lubricant.  I put it all into a clear plastic bag, so it was clearly visible, and thoroughly wrapped the top closed with a strip of duct tape.  There you go.  You want the Discman?  You have to take everything.

If I would have impregnated a lady during those housing days, our child would be just about old enough to buy themselves a pack of KOOLs, right now.  Black Elvis actually came out 2 years before that, in 1999, the same year as Keith‘s first release under the Dr Dooom moniker, First Come First Served.  That mean’s that it wasn’t even his latest release, at the time — he’d already followed it up with both Matthew [2000] and Spankmaster [2001].  Prior to those albums, he’d dropped a pair of back-to-back classics, first as Dr Octagon with his groundbreaking solo debut, Octagonecologist, and then with the porno-core masterpiece, Sex Style.  Since then, the emcee has remained busy, steady pumping out at least 2 dozen more projects.  His latest is simply titled KEITH, and it’s a collaboration with legendary Beatnuts co-founder/producer, Psycho Les.  It drops tomorrow, July 12  and in the very first track, Keith makes a reference to Astroglide, of all things.

Keith Thornton is a prolific artist, but with all the material and projects that he puts out, with various producers through various labels, it can be difficult to keep up with everything.  On top of that, the work itself can often be inconsistent.  This is not unlike his live shows, where he has the ability to put on one of the greatest shows you’ll ever see, or phone it in completely, even failing to show up at all.  Because of this, I’ve opted to miss shows, only to later hear about how amazing they were.  Likewise, I’ve allowed releases to slip by like the truly impressive Time? Astonishing, his 2015 release produced by North Carolina born Seattle-based Nashville transplant, L’Orange.  The thing about Keith is that, although he definitely came out the gate with some timeless/iconic releases, it’s not simply age or lack of ideas that has caused him to slip up over time; things can literally shift in quality from one project to the next and back again.  Beginning with his work as a member of Ultramagnetic MCs in 1980s  through the early 90s, Thornton has been flipping the genre on its end, coming with some of the most original content anywhere.  He’s personally credited himself as a formative figure, if not full on inventor, of multiple hip hop genres including horror core and what he refers to as “pornocore.”  His legacy as a pioneer of futuristic space rap seems hardly debatable, especially if you consider his influence on subsequent artists and projects like Deltron 3030, which saw Octagonecologyst producer, Dan The Automator, resurrecting much of the formula with Del at the helm, after Keith chose to move on, work with Kutmaster Kurt, and, (not so) effectively, murder the good doctor with his Dooom alias on the introduction to his follow up.  Considering his penchant for rhyming about all things spaceage and erotic, Astroglide actually seems like the ideal product for the Kool one to sponsor, if he ever opted to go that route.

Psycho Les is another great in the hip hop world whose name isn’t brought nearly as much as it probably should be.  If his work with the Beatnuts and pushing the remix forward as an artform wasn’t impressive enough, Les has done production work for artists like Monie Love, Fat Joe, and Ill Bill to Common, Mos Def, Homeboy Sandman and fellow Native Tongues crew members like Black Sheep and Busta Rhymes.  He’s also remained sharp on the mic over the years, appearing on at least two notable releases back in 2016: the third Czarface album, A Fistful Of Peril, and on Kool Keith‘s previously release for the Mellow Music Group label, Feature Magnetic.

On one hand, two old school pioneers like Les and Keith working together seems like the most organic thing possible, but mashing two cats together, no matter who they are, doesn’t always mesh this well.  Even better is the fact that, although the artists behind it each have decades in the game under their respective belts, KEITH doesn’t sound at all like it’s stuck in the past.  In recent years, acts like Czarface and Run The Jewels have yielded similar success, making the case that these sort of team-ups between separate artists with their own individual longevity can result in some of the most refreshing material in the current age.  This is honestly one of my favorite phenomenons in music at the moment; old heads coming through with new shit to crush the game, rather than over focusing on and picking apart whatever a younger generation might be doing.  Feature Magnetic proved a solid offering, and KEITH seems to be following suit, with Les‘s jazzy boom-bap and dark synths providing the perfect foundation for Thornton to demonstrate that he still has the ability to same high caliber and descriptive wordplay that he’s build his name on.  He sounds comfortable.  It sounds good.  It also manages to feel like authentic Keith, while offering something new to his catalog.  There’s a definite consistency in the tracks with having a single producer like Les take on the project in its entirety, but there’s also plenty of diversity in the sound and opportunities for Keith to switch up his cadence and delivery.

Just like with Feature Magnetic, Les only picks up the mic for a single track on the pair’s new collaborative LP.  Unlike that previous album, Keith Turbo doesn’t have someone joining him to spit a verse on every single track, but the select features that he does pull are fairly interesting, if not unexpected, selections.  For the closing track they bring in B Real of Cypress hill, with Jeru The Damaja popping up to bless the doomy subterranean “She Answer.”  As for that lead off joint, after the intro, it’s called “Foot Locka” and involves Paul Wall taking a quick break from slanging grillz to lay down a verse of his own.  The content of the song? you might ask.  It’s about how sexy Footlocker employees look, so… the typical leftfield shit we’ve learned to expect from Poppa Large.

KEITH will be available tomorrow July 12th on streaming services.  Pre-order the physical now from Mellow Music Group.