Long Live the King

Who is Black Elvis? Who killed Dr. Octagon?
To find the answers to those questions and many more (some of which haven't even been posed yet), one must become familiar with the enigma that is Kool Keith. This rapper, musician and producer is one of the most innovative hip-hop artists since the genre's inception, and that may be because he's not exactly what one might call completely sane. Throughout his long and prolific career, Keith has maintained his strong standing as a quality rapper and an odd individual-how else would one describe a man who has released a plethora of recordings (so many singles and one-offs that one really knows exactly how much material is out there), maintains at least a dozen alter-egos, rents three separate, small apartments in Los Angeles, and once told an interviewer that he had a remote control that controls the moon?
Regardless of-or perhaps as a result of-Keith's, um, unique mental state of being, his music is undeniably on point. As an original member of the New York-based Ultramagnetic MCs, a group that stopped making music in the early '90s (and recently made a failed comeback attempt without Keith), Keith's roots in the national hip-hop scene run deep, but as he is quick to point out, he is certainly not running with the crowd.
After many productive years, releasing countless joints with Ultramagnetic MCs, working with quality producers like Kutmasta Kurt and Dan "The Automator" Nakamura, and appearing on various other projects, Keith finally gained widespread national recognition a few years back with the Dr. Octagon persona (R.I.P.), a project that had Keith rapping over tracks laid down by The Automator and scratches by the Invisbl Skratch Piklz' DJ Q-Bert. The result was Dr. Octagonecologyst, a collection of tunes full of new sounds and abstract, science-fiction rhymes that set the hip-hop community on its ear. (The premise is that Dr. Octagon, a gynecologist from the year 3000, travels back in time to the year 1996 to wreak havoc and perform unnecessary operations.) But shortly after Dr. Octagon gained massive amounts of notoriety, the character was silenced and eventually killed by Dr. Dooom, one of Keith's latest personas, for reasons of major-label nastiness.
Other characters in Keith's stable include Robbie Analog, Fly Ricky The Wine Taster, Mr. Gerbick (the 208-year-old uncle of Dr. Octagon-half shark/alligator, half man), Keith Turbo, Willie Biggs, Clean Man, The Reverend Tom, Sinister 6000, Rhythm X, Poppa Large, Mr. Green, Dr. Dooom (the killer of Dr. Octagon), Willie Natural, and his latest creation, Black Elvis.
Kool Keith's Black Elvis/Lost in Space (Columbia/Ruffhouse) record has garnered Keith more accolades than any of his other alter-egos to date, and is his most successful character. The music is all Keith, who handled full production duties, and the record has built so much steam that it sold out of the local Tower Records in two days.
An interview with Kool Keith is a bit of a daunting prospect. Despite the fact that he is one hip-hop's heavy hitters-albeit unwittingly-if you've heard anything about him, it's probably that he's crazy, and that assessment may be correct to a certain extent. However, when I finally caught up with Keith, he was being shuttled into a hotel room, and though he yawned a lot at the interview's outset, the whole thing wasn't any weirder than I had anticipated.
Sure, he's not what one could call completely together upstairs-to put it simply, he is an abstract thinker-but he is obviously lucid enough to manage a small empire and keep his head well above water. As his publicist told me, "Hey, he runs his own shit, so that should tell you something. And he's really not any crazier than, say, Mike Watt."

You're a busy man, eh?
Yeah. [Chuckles]

Where are you?
Cincinnati.

Did you play there last night, or is that tonight's show?
Yeah.

Okay. So where are you living these days?
Huh? So what's happening with you? Where are you at?

Chico, California. It's about two hours north of Sacramento. So you put out two records-Dr. Dooom's First Come First Served and the Black Elvis/Lost In Space record-in the last few months. What drives you to create so much?
It depends. I just get into the groove. [Says something incoherently while yawning.] It's just easy, man.

You have over a dozen alter-egos. [Keith lets out a sinister little laugh.] Why not just release everything as Kool Keith?
I'm starting to now. I've just been working on the Black Elvis thing for a long time. I think it's going to be one of my longest-lived characters.

Why?
Black Elvis makes me the most money. All the other characters are broke.

Do any of your other alter-egos have a recording future?
I might do a Volume 1 compilation. [Having alter-egos] is cool, I like it in different ways. It gives me dimension on my records and makes me go into different projects. I'm a one man band within myself

Why did Dr. Dooom kill Dr. Octagon?
A lot of reasons. He got tired of Octagon's whole format and project. The birth of that project was cool, and I like The Automator, but people took a lot of their time… [Keith trails off in a series of yawns.]

It's been said recently that you don't make hip-hop records, you make Kool Keith records.
Yeah. Musically? You sayin' they're not, like, like the trendy hip-hop record? Yeah. It's that futuristic sound and stuff. I'm glad that I'm not making a record that is standard-a hip-hop record that fits in with everybody else's format. I'm good at making records out of the norm. Musically, also.

You did all the production on Black Elvis. Is that the first time you've done it all yourself?
Full production, yeah. I was working with all these different producers and it was cool-working with The Automator was cool; working with [Kutmasta] Kurt was cool, and different assorted other producers were cool at the time. People were offering me beats at one time, but they all sounded like the same type of beat, besides from the stuff I did with Ultra, The Automator and Kurt, and it was cool working with them. But [with Black Elvis] I felt like it was time for me to do my own production. And I didn't care what producers were hot at the time. I can't work with any of them because I felt I was making an album where I didn't want to record it just for the Top 10 trend that everybody's collaborating with-get the top producers and do two tracks with that guy, then two tracks with the next guy. I felt that would be too predictable for me.

The album sounds great, and it's getting great reviews from critics and fans, both new and old.
Yeah, I mean for me to be doing it by myself. People probably don't know that I'm doing a lot of music behind the scenes. I did stuff behind the scenes through my whole career, I just didn't ever put my name in the wording on the album. See, I play bass and keyboards, I even played the bass line on [Dr. Octagon's] "Blue Flowers," did the bass tracks on "Sex Style." I've played a lot of tracks on a lot of my albums, but I never put my name on the albums. It was just helping the producers out.
It's like, I'm so opposite the opposing teams, but I have a fetish for other music. Like, I listen to the Cash Money stuff, you know, down in the South. The Scarface stuff, the No Limit stuff, just because it's not the predictable stuff that you hear on the East Coast all the time. It's something different. See, I grew up in New York, and I don't want to hear the same sounds, the urban city sounds that everybody does, that are more trendy in the city.
Me, musically, I didn't grow up on jazz records, and New York tends to seem like it's based upon jazz only. I grew up on funk like Slave and Confunction. I lived in New York, and it hurts to see that New York doesn't have a foreground of funk anymore. A lot of these [funk] groups were from the East Coast. George Clinton is from New Jersey. L.A. and Houston have more funk than the East Coast now because the fact is that it's a shame… I mean, Roger and Zap came from Ohio, which is way closer to New York than Los Angeles, and there's more Zap on the West Coast. And the South has funk. It's just funny how New York has become a more jazz-based town. It's more calm. I think the industry has slowed down the limitation of music as far as how rough music should be, even with radio calming music down. Everything is very friendly, soft, pop-sounding. You can't hear a mean, rugged bass line no more on primetime radio. You're not going to hear a Slide song, onfunction, nothin' mean. You're not going to hear a record like "Word Up" no more. You're not going to hear no Atomic Dog, no more George Clinton, no Bounce For The Ounce no more.

Why do you think that is?
Well, they watered the industry down to a pop thing now, it's like they watered it down to a science. There's only pop-oriented radio, sweet radio. Records are supposed to be sweet like candy. You got a lot of softer groups getting signed now, more clamed-down with that type of Babyface appeal; your friendlier radio groups-your Boyz II Men; and then you got your Whitney Houstons, Mariah Careys. All the producers are prone to making their records that way, and so it's like a big trend. It's like making a Grand Slam at Denny's-it becomes the recipe, the formula to make the record. It's not mean. You'll never hear a mean bass line record on the radio. It's just been diluted. The roughest thing you might have is the down-South stuff. That's probably the roughest you'll hear on the radio-Scarface stuff with mean bass lines.
And you know, me, who is using more different equipment, all the critics will hate, like a lot of the magazines. I've actually been getting a lot of good reviews on the Black Elvis album, but I'm just sayin' that on a lot of the previous stuff that I've done-the things I've been involved with that are my own sound, even with Dr. Dooom-the critics aren't into mean bass lines and haunted tracks. It's too scary. Everything else is just very creamy. It's just political, how all the labels have collaborated with this trend, this formula and it's getting corny because everyone has the same sound, and I think the critics hate my albums because they don't have those sound elements. You could pick up any album that's in the Top 20, and they'll all have the same sounds-the same drum machine, the same keyboards. My albums don't use that standard equipment, and people are buggin' out because the formula is different: "Oh, his sounds aren't the average sounds I hear on the Destiny's Child album. His sounds aren't the sounds I hear on the Boyz II Men album. His sounds are not the sounds I hear on the last Whitney album. I don't hear his sounds on 112's album. I don't hear his sounds on KC & JoJo's album. I don't hear his sounds…"
The critics are flipping out on that. Some are positive and some are just negative and jealous because I'm not using the equipment that the industry uses on a regular basis. All these groups are using the sounds that are more towards getting them down that highway. I think me going out of the norm-which is the new sound of the future-shows that I have more respect for myself as an artist. I'm not stealing something from Timbaland. I'm not stealin' from Teddy Riley. I'm not stealin', and so people are prone to feel like, "Well, if you're not using any of these guys [producers] you're not eligible to be in the producer's category." Which is wrong. I take my own stand and I'm doing my own stuff, and people are tripping out on that. I think it's a real surprise to them.

You've been at this for a while. Why do you think you're so successful now?
Uh… 'Cause people are getting tired of everybody doing the same shit. I mean, it's like [Gang Starr's] DJ Premier: He has his own jazz sound, but the whole scene in New York City is trying to do his type of music. He's the inventor of his music, and I didn't go and try to be Premier because New York City has tons of producers trying to be like Premier. Same with Dr. Dre-you have a bunch of guys trying to do his music. Nobody has their own foreground. I mean, Timbaland is a great producer but I can't do his music. Jermain Dupree is the same way. I can't do that. I have to go do what Keith knows how to do, and I give myself a pat on the back. At least I'm not going out trying to call myself 'Timbaland 2,' 'cause you got other people out there doing that shit.
You can look at all my albums from the past years, man, and even Ultra has their own sound. Dr. Octagon, Sex Style… Everything always had its own sound, and I think people fear us in general. That whole organization-Kool Keith, where I come from-they feel like sound is just a motherfucker. I'm not motivated by anyone else's stuff. I like to listen to it, but I'm doing my own shit and it ain't no bite from George Clinton and I'm not doing some old Larry Blackmon shit or Commodores shit from the past. I haven't based myself on anybody old and I haven't based myself on anybody new. I just think I have my own galactic new shit.

Your lyrical content doesn't really fall within the norm either. Where do you write from?
I'm always writing, it doesn't take me long to write a song. I see some artists in the studio and it takes them two days to write a song. Me, I can pick up a pad and jot my whole idea so fast, it's so quick, it doesn't even bother me. It's just natural now, even doing these stage shows, I can get up on stage and do my thing, even stuff from the old albums, get off the stage and that's that. It's just natural to do all this stuff-write rhymes and finish records in the studio.
I don't have a base of people to base myself on. I don't have Lenny Kravitz around me everyday, or even hang with the industry. I'm just an alienated person with music. I mean, I'm in the music industry and then I'm not in the music industry, 'cause I'm not at the parties or the functions, I'm not talking to people shit like, "What machines are you using?" "How'd you get that sound?" "How did you get into the Top 5?" and "How did you program that beat for Whitney Houston?" That is how all those people get their ideas-biting stuff from people. I am not in the music industry. I'm out of it and I'm in it at the same time.

Are you a science fiction fan?
To a certain extent. My albums are naturally sci-fi, but I don't even watch a lot of that stuff. I did used watch Lost In Space a lot back in the days, but, man, I don't even watch Star Trek. I think I'm just naturally futuristic. My whole, uh… All of me is just the future, even in what I buy-shirts, glasses, I even like my hotel rooms to look like the future. I don't really like a lot of old-fashioned stuff. I get off on going to Vegas and looking at the aerodynamic buildings and places that have rocket ship-shaped buildings. I'm into technology and advancement. I think I'm just naturally aerodynamic.

What does the future hold for Kool Keith?
More future, man. More futuristic shit.

Takin' it to the next level?
I've been at the next level since 1986, but nobody never knew. [Laughing as he hangs up the phone]

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